Avengers OC Insert
by GeekyGirl183
Summary: After witnessing the destruction of her home planet, amnesiac Lumna crash lands on the strange planet of Earth in the most destructive way possible when she discovers a dangerous secret inside of her that only an unlikely ally and enemy can help her decipher. I only own my OC's, I DO NOT own the Avengers, the movies, or the picture used for the cover.
1. OC File- Lumna

AN- Some things will have their information updated in here after they're shown in the story chapters so that there are no spoilers.

Names:

Chrysinthean Name- Lumna

Name in India- Pyre

Given Name- Ash

Hero Name- Atomic Flame, Ion Phoenix

Sakaaran Name- Ember

Tony's Nickname- Flame/Hothead(mostly when she's angry or annoyed and her hair catches on fire)/Firegirl

Species:

Chrysinthean

Age:

10 when Chrysinthea is destroyed

Personality:

A techie after being introduced to technology by Stark, shy but friendly once she gets to know someone, insecure, and defensive.

Physical Appearance:

Mid-length auburn hair, reddish-brown skin, reddish-copper swirled eyes, and light orange lips

Abilities:

Nuclear Pyrokinetic Abilities:

Fire Pyrokinesis - Can create, control and manipulate also generate fire, flame, and heat with radiation combined.

Fire Breath - Is able to breathe out flames from her mouth when she eats something spicy.

Nuclear Self-Detonation - Can nuclearly explode self and, barely, survive

Thermokinesis - Can create, control, manipulate, and expel heat, but risks exposing others nearby to radiation.

Pyroportation - Is able to move through fire without getting hurt

Matter Transmutation - Can manipulate matter on an atomic level to completely change something into a different thing, but the process leaves her extremely exhausted and can only mutate small scale objects

Plasmakinesis - Can control plasma and fire only when combined with Astra.

Nuclear Energy Manipulation, and Hyper Regeneration

Weaknesses:

\- Water or any extinguishing agent and can't flame up until she steams off whatever agent was applied to her

\- Ionized radiation

\- High winds and altitudes

\- Lack of oxygen

\- Freezing (below 0) temperatures severely weaken her ability to flame up unless she's in her suit

\- Can't survive long in absolute zero (-273 C), even in her suit

\- Hyper Regeneration rate depends on how much energy she has

\- Can't use powers in a vacuum

\- If she gets too scared, her internal radiation levels rise and if she doesn't expel it somehow, she could have a fallout

Given Tech: Will be filling this out as the story progresses


	2. The Quiet Before the Calamity

Lumna's POV

I can still remember when the invaders came to my home planet…

I was only 10 rotations old and in the training grounds for fire wielders to be taught how to use their powers properly.

There were other fire wielders in the training grounds, all wearing the same red and orange training uniform, but I was happy to have Xavion, my best friend since we were very young, there with me.

He had bushy red hair like mine that barely covered his eyes, his skin was ashy gray, and his eyes were a piercing yellow, but he was always friendly to everyone he came across and would often make me smile with funny faces and his created pyrotechnics.

We had been preparing to return to our home villages after completing our training and I had been looking forward to seeing my sister and mother after 2 rotations when darkness fell over the site.

Looking up, we all saw a giant ship coming through the storms that surrounded the planet to protect us and, from the ship, creatures with armor for skin came out, spreading out all over the planet with one diving towards the training grounds I was in.

"Leviathans!"

"Chitauri!"

"Get inside!"

Our trainers yelled to us and we were all told to run for cover as the flying Leviathans and Chitauri loomed closer to our position.

In the rush to get to safety, I was pushed to the ground, getting left behind in the process so, I quickly got up and hid behind a large rock, looking up fearfully at the approaching flying Leviathans. With piercing shrieks, more Chitauri came out from the Leviathan, wielding spears that crackled with electricity.

Screeching with blood-chilling ferocity, they ran right past my hiding spot as I curled up behind it and they stormed the growths where the other trainees and trainers where hiding and proceeded to slaughter them all, their screams reaching my ears even as I attempted to cover them as tears streamed from my closed eyes.

Unexpectedly, I was shoved out of my hiding space by a sharp smack to my side as a Chitauri soldier found and hit me with its spear. I tried to get away by crawling backward as it was about to impale me with its spear, but it backed me into another rock raising its spear to finish me. I put my hands over my face, awaiting my fate, when I heard a shriek before a loud 'thud' was heard shortly after. I opened my eyes to see that Xavion had come back and killed the Chitauri warrior that was about to kill me with a blast of fire.

"Lumna… You must hurry to the escape pods..." He told me in his quiet voice, as I got to my feet carefully approaching Xavion from behind as his back was to me.

"Don't you mean 'we' must hurry to the escape pods?" My question went unanswered as he fell to the ground on his side. Hurriedly, I got down and turned him over to reveal that his core had been pierced by the Chitauri's spear.

"Xavion!" I tried to shake him awake, but he didn't respond. I kneeled down next to his body, tears welling in my eyes right before I heard more soldiers approaching quickly, I looked down at Xavion one last time before getting up and running as fast as I could to the escape pods. I didn't see my mother or my little sister as I was put into a single-seated pod and launched out of the planet's atmosphere.

Just outside of the planet's atmosphere, I could see how bad the invasion truly was; the storms that had kept our planet safe for countless rotations were down, allowing numerous Leviathans to lay waste to the entire planet, some shooting down pods that had been launched along with mine, barely missing mine, while others destroyed the various villages all over the planet.

Right before I activated the hyperjump function to leave the Anagoran galaxy, I took the silver locket chain, that my mother gave me and my sister, in my hands, looking at the photos of me, my mother, and my sister on one side and me and Xavion smiling on the other.

Casting one last look back at my home planet before closing my teary eyes and hitting the button to hyperjump away with the fist I had closed around my locket.


	3. Landing on Earth

Lumna's POV

When the hyperjump had finished, I must have passed out because, when I woke up, I was laying on the ground next to a pile of crushed metal, surrounded on all sides by blazing heat, but I felt fine as the flames brushed against me thanks to my fire element.

I got up from the ground to see people trying to escape from the flames and I followed them out of the wreckage past a damaged sign whose remaining text said in a foreign language "Narora".

When I came up to them to ask where I was they yelled some kind of foreign language that I understood as "Monster!" and began to throw things at me, so I ran away from them as far as I could get.

When I got far enough away, I looked at myself in a puddle of muddy water and saw that I was covered in soot, dressed in dirty and slightly ripped clothes, and I looked different from the beings I had encountered and deduced that that was the reason why I had frightened them; I was different than them.

I kept walking away from the wreckage I came out of until I came across a small place that I thought to be a "village". After disguising myself in some stolen native clothing as well as a mottled dark brown cloak, I pulled up its hood to conceal my face and was walking through the small civilization I had run to and was walking through while attempting to hide my face every time a being had come close to me. I found a small space between two homes that I settled myself in and went to sleep that night.

From then on, every morning I would find or steal some food to eat and go back to hiding in the home I made for myself.

A few weeks had passed and I was adjusting to this civilization just fine until the day I found out about my affliction.

When I was walking past what appeared to be a gathering of the beings I had come to know as humans, I saw a group of them gathered around a pile of what I recognized to be wood as they were arguing amongst themselves in their language. I walked around them quietly, scared to be seen, past the woodpile and it instantly burst into flames as I passed it. My scalp was starting to feel like it was being stabbed by tiny points that spread to the rest of me and out in a strange-feeling aura when the people stopped their arguing to yell,

"Denav!" (Demon) and, once again, I was forced to run away to avoid being hit by thrown objects.

I settled to leave this town for another one as everyone in the area eventually found out about my abilities and the people who had been around at the time were said to have gotten sick after I had run away from them due to unknown reasons at the time.

When I later heard about how they died because of "radiation", I figured that when I had crash-landed onto this planet, I must have been changed somehow and was now more dangerous than I was before.

After everyone in the village found out and forced me to leave, I traveled around from town to town, but everywhere I stopped, even for one night, I was always chased away after people heard about what I was capable of.

After my first experience in one of those turmoils, I soon learned that, when I became scared, more and more people got sick and a few of them perished because of whatever was wrong with me.

Often, I would spend the nights sleeping under the stars away from civilizations, trying to sort through what memories I could recall about my home planet, but I could never remember anything about it, only that it had been attacked by beings I no longer remembered. It seemed that my crash onto this planet had given me a mild case of amnesia, I could still remember myself, my family, and my best friend because of my locket, but I could not remember much of anything else about my home that was no longer existent.

After wandering around various areas, I learned a little about the language that was spoken and spoke it myself at times, but it was never enough to convince them that I was not a threat, unless provoked. I had given up hope of ever finding a place I would never be forced out of, until one fateful day...


	4. Meeting Bruce Banner

All underlined text is what is translated

Lumna's POV

I had switched out my clothes for new ones as my old ones were getting worn thin, but I kept my hooded cloak from the night I arrived. I had also stolen a sharp-edged knife to use when it was absolutely necessary to defend myself. Although I suspected I would only need to use it to cut apart certain foods of this planet that were not edible from the outside, as I had learned quite painfully in other villages I had been to before.

I was walking through the town, pocketing the knife when I saw a few people in a group pointing at me and I instantly knew that I was about to be attacked, so I ran as fast as I could away from them.

In my hurry, I accidentally shoved someone aside so I yelled back a quick apology before running off.

I wove my way through carts and people riding animals, but the people were still behind me so I ran in between two buildings, hoping that I could hide there.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough as the people found me hiding behind several crates and proceeded to hit me violently with large, blunt objects. One blow landed on my neck, making my vision blurry and dotted with black spots, forcing me onto my knees and hands before I was forcefully kicked over. In my haze, I saw one of the people standing in front of me holding some kind of a silver blur and I heard a metallic noise until a voice rang out,

"Enough!" and the people ran away, leaving me on my side on the ground with my bright orange blood running along the side of my face from a cut on my temple as my hood fell down.

In my last few seconds of consciousness, I saw a man kneeling down in front of me before all went dark.

When I came to, I was laying in a dimly lit space and my head and neck hurt immensely. I sat up and I moaned a bit at how hard my head started to throb and I pressed my hands to my eyes when the same voice I heard before I passed out asked,

"Are you alright?"

When my vision cleared up, I saw a man with curly black and gray hair wearing thin-rimmed glasses and professional-looking clothes sitting on a chair next to where I had been laying.

I didn't know if this person was being genuinely friendly so I tried to back away before he held out his hands in a non-threatening manner and spoke quietly,

"I'm not going to hurt you."

"Are you going to kill me?" I asked in a different language as it was a nervous habit of mine to switch languages when I'm scared. Luckily, the man seemed to understand the language I had switched to and answered with,

"No no, I just wanted to make sure that you're not badly injured or anything and to ask you why those people tried to kill you."

I was about to answer when he held up a hand to stop me before continuing, "But first thing's first, I'm Bruce." He held out a hand to me, but I didn't know what he wanted me to do so I looked at him questioningly,

"What am I supposed to do?"

"It's a handshake?" He looked at me questioningly, "You just shake like this."

Bruce used his other hand to take mine and made it move up and down. After he finished, I held my hand in the air for a few seconds looking at it strangely.

"Have you never handshaked anyone before?"

"No…"

"Well, what's your name?" I looked at him blankly, not knowing what he meant.

"What are you called?"

"Back home, I was known as Lumna."

"Back home? Where is your home?"

"Another galaxy…"

"Are you saying you're an alien?" I nodded slowly, flinching, waiting for the yelling and throwing objects.

"Hey, it's OK you're safe here."

I looked down at the dirt floor, avoiding eye contact, "Most beings I come across call me a monster and either try to kill me or force me to leave their town."

"I guess we're both monsters then." Bruce told me and I looked up to see that he was being sincere.

"How are you a monster?" I tilted my head to the side in question.

"Well, when I get angry, I turn into this 'Other Guy' and destroy everything in my path until I calm back down." He looked at me expectantly like he was waiting for me to run away in fear, but I stayed in place.

"What are you doing here on Earth?" He asked me after a few seconds of thoughtful silence.

"I… can't remember…"

"Why not?"

"My pod crashed in a place called 'Narora'. I lost some of my memories and the crash gave me my affliction..."

"'Affliction', wait, you're the one who caused the explosion at the Narora power plant a few months ago, aren't you?"

I was hesitant to answer, thinking and fearing the possibility that Bruce would become hostile towards me if I told him that I did cause the explosion. My fear began to build up as my breathing accelerated and I could feel the strange aura around myself as my hands prickled.

"Hey hey it's OK you're safe here." Bruce assured me gently and I breathed deeply to slow my rapid heartbeats.

"You're emitting gamma radiation." I looked up to see that Bruce's hand was starting to turn a light shade of green before returning back to normal.

"Gamma radiation?" I questioned, confused.

"It's a dangerous form of energy that could kill a human being, but it looks like since you're not human, it didn't kill you." I looked down at my hands again, finally knowing the answer to why I was so dangerous and not sure if I was better off not knowing.

"Can remember why you're on Earth?"

"No..."

"But it's not to invade Earth is it?"

"No! My people despise war of any kind and I have no intention of invading Earth." Lumna's hands started to glow at the mention of war causing Bruce to hold out his hands and reassure her,

"I'm sorry if that upset you." Lumna's shaking hands stopped glowing as she looked down at them with a fearful look.

"It's too powerful for me to contain…"

"I think I can help you." I looked up at Bruce with hope in my eyes as he got up to get something that was in a small box.

In his hand, was a small, glowing blue mineral inside of a faceted metal rim that was no bigger than the palm of my hand.

"This," Bruce held up the mineral to give me a closer look, "Is concentrated ionized radiation, I had hoped it would help to cure me, it didn't, but maybe it'll help you."

He handed me the crystal and, as soon as I touched it, I could feel the strange aura dissipate, but not leave entirely. Before I tried to summon some flames, a thought occurred to me,

"Why are you helping me?"

"Because I'm trying to help people since I hurt so many more as the Other Guy." I saw his sadness in his face as he told me that.

"You lost someone, didn't you?"

"Yeah… yeah I did…"

I put a hand on his and patted it softly and he looked at me sadly before getting up and saying,

"You can stay here if you'd like, you'd have to stay inside and away from the windows, but everyone knows to not come into this house so you'll be safe."

"Safe?" I cocked my head to show I had never heard that word before.

"It means you're out of danger now, you don't have to be afraid anymore." I nodded to show I understood and lay back down on the makeshift bed and fell back asleep, smiling to know that I was out of danger at last.

...

Over time, I stayed in the house and Bruce would give me books to read, even if they were in another language, and he would teach me what he could about life on Earth. He told me about his accident and why he, too, was hiding from his enemies and I told him about my planet's destruction and how I promised to look for my sister when the time was right.

Once, he told me a story about a bird that is made of fire and is reborn from its own ashes, and he gave me the Earth name Ash, since he told me I was like a phoenix rising from the disaster of my past, and it made me feel less threatening than I really was.

We created a series of hand signals in case we were ever in a precarious situation and we couldn't talk and he would also teach me methods on controlling my fear so that I wouldn't "have a fallout" as he called it, explaining that it would harm me and everyone close by.

Every day he would leave to help the people of the village we were in and I would find ways to entertain myself, taking up wood carving to pass the time by creating small figurines of animals and plants from my planet and reading more of his 'textbooks' as he called them to learn more about Earth sciences.

A year had passed and Bruce told me that no one had even mentioned the name "Pyre" when he would leave for the day and that relieved me, but I still stayed inside, just in case...


	5. Recruited

Underlined text is translated conversation

In Calcutta, India

With Bruce and Ash

"Ash?" Bruce called out softly through his house.

From behind a small table in the corner of the living room, Ash with her scruffy red hair and dull mahogany skin, wearing a hooded cloak over a simple brown shirt and matching pants with brown closed-toed shoes popped her head up as she read a book on Thermodynamics for beginners.

"Yes…?"

"I think it's safe for you to come out of hiding." He chuckled a little at her antics of hiding even when inside, but stopped when he saw that Ash was shaking her head rapidly with genuine fear on her face.

"It's safe, it's been a while since you've been outside and everyone's most likely forgotten about you by now." He tried to assure her, but she looked down nervously, avoiding eye contact.

"No…" Ash whispered as she pulled her cloak hood down even more and went back to reading. Bruce came over and kneeled down next to her.

"Come on, why don't you come with me to town, there's been a sickness going around and they called me in, but I might need a helper."

"Someone could see me and…" She trailed off thinking about the last time she went outside and almost got killed if Bruce hadn't stepped in.

"Just for today? I think it might be good to get out of this place for a little bit, you haven't been outside in almost a year. OK?"

"OK…" Ash gave in, stood up from her corner, put the book on the table, pulled her cloak hood up, picked up a strip of cloth to wrap around her wrist to keep her injector bracelet hidden, and put a scarf over her face to where only her red and copper eyes were barely visible. She made sure to grab and pocket her pendant as well before Bruce grabbed his medical bag and they headed to the house that he was called in to.

_Short Time Skip_

Later that evening, Ash was helping to apply a wet cloth to a child's forehead to bring down the fever he had when she heard the woman who was the head of the house they were in scolding someone,

"What are doing here?! Get out! You shouldn't be here!" Ash turned to see that a little girl was at the entrance to the room and was rambling to the woman,

"I have to see the doctor! It's my father! He's moaning but he won't open his eyes-"

"Slow down." Bruce told the girl putting a hand up to slow her down.

"My father…" The girl trailed off looking over at the people Ash was helping to treat. Bruce kneeled down to the girl's level and pointed to the people, asking her,

"Like them?"

The little girl holds out a couple of crumpled bills in her hand as her voice cracks in saying,

"Please."

"Lead the way." Bruce turns back to Ash, speaking in English,

"Watch our backs." To which she responds with a nod, placing one last wet cloth on another patient's forehead before drying her hands and following Bruce and the little girl out of the house.

The girl led the two of them to a house that was at the edge of the town, but Bruce holds out his arm to stop the girl when a vehicle with people riding in the back passes by the three of them as Bruce turned his back to them and Ash pulled her hood further down over her eyes.

When the vehicle passes, they continue into the house where the girl runs ahead into another room and Ash looks in time to see the girl climb out a window and vanish into the night.

"Should have got paid up front, Banner." Bruce told himself after he realized the girl was gone. Ash was about to nod in agreement when a new voice sounded,

"You know, for a man who's supposed to be avoiding stress, you picked a hell of a place to settle." A woman with short red hair wearing a shawl over a long dress came out from behind some curtains, startling Bruce and Ash into stunned silence.

"Avoiding stress isn't the secret." Bruce told the woman as he put his medical bag down.

"Then, what is it? Yoga?"

"You brought me to the edge of the city, smart." Bruce observed as he looked out the house's windows and Ash stayed in place watching the woman as Bruce continued, "I uh... assume the whole place is surrounded?

"Just you two and me." She answered, dropping the shawl on a nearby chair and motioning to Ash to take off her hood, but she kept it on with a firm shake of her head.

"And your actress buddy, is she a spy too? Do they start that young?" Bruce asked pointedly, pointing to the window where the little girl had escaped through.

"I did."

"Who are you?"

"Natasha Romanoff."

Bruce gently punched his hands together for a few seconds before asking Natasha,

"Are you here to kill us, Miss Romanoff? Because that's not gonna work out for everyone."

"No. No. Of course not. I'm here on behalf of SHIELD."

"SHIELD." Ash looked up at Bruce in confusion, but he made a hand motion that signaled her to wait for the answer before he continued, "How did they find me?"

"We never lost you, doctor. We've kept our distance, even helped keep some other interested parties off your scent, especially after this one left a trail of radiation poisoning cases in 10 villages alone." Natasha motioned her head to Ash and she further retreated into her cloak with guilt in her large eyes.

"Why?"

"Nick Fury seems to trust you. But now I need you two to come in."

"What if I say no?"

"I'll persuade you."

"And what if the... Other Guy says no?"

"You've been more than a year without an incident. I don't think you wanna break that streak." Natasha walked over to a table pulling out a small electronic device as Bruce and Ash walked after her, Bruce stopping to rock a small cradle that was in the house as he told her,

"I don't every time get what I want."

"Doctor, we're facing a potential global catastrophe." Natasha continued as she typed away at the device in her hands.

"Well, those I actively try to avoid."

Natasha pulls out a device that has an image of a blue, glowing cube on it.

"This," Natasha put the device down on the table and slid it towards Bruce as he pulled out his glasses to examine the photo more closely, "is the Tesseract. It has the potential energy to wipe out the planet."

"What does Fury want me to do? Swallow it?" He asks dubiously, looking back up in disbelief as Ash looks at the device to see the photo.

"Well, he wants you to find it. It's been taken. It emits a gamma signature that's too weak for us to trace. There's no one that knows gamma radiation like you do. If there was, that's where I'd be. And she might be able to help us considering her little… accident a year ago in Narora." Natasha leaned back in her seat to look at Bruce and Ash.

"So Fury isn't after the monster?"

"Not that he's told me."

"And he tells you everything?"

There was a brief pause before Natasha answered with,

"Talk to Fury, he needs you on this."

"He needs me in a cage and Ash in a cell?"

"No one's gonna put you two in a-" Natasha was reaching over to the device when Bruce thumped the table with both hands yelling,

"STOP LYING TO ME!"

Shocking Ash and making Natasha pull out a gun that had been hidden under the table and aiming it at Bruce. Ash starts panicking until Bruce made another small motion with his hand that he was alright and she took deep breaths as she unwrapped and activated her injector bracelet to stop the build-up of radiation before it could even start.

"I'm sorry, that was mean. I just wanted to see what you'd do." Bruce smiled a bit as he held out his hands motioning to himself as he told her, "Why don't we do this the easy way, where you don't use that, and the Other Guy doesn't make a mess? Okay? Natasha…"

Natasha lowered her gun after a few tense moments before touching her earpiece and telling the person on the other end,

"Stand down. We're good here."

When Ash looked outside, she silently gasped at all the soldiers in black uniforms with guns lowered to their side. She turned back to face Natasha as Bruce looked at her with a smirk saying,

"Just you and us?"

Natasha put the gun down and looked at Bruce uncomfortably before saying,

"Jet leaves in 10 minutes." She walked out the door to assure the troops that they were coming peacefully.

"You alright?" Bruce asked Ash as they walked out of the house following Natasha to a jet that was parked past some trees. Ash just nodded in reply as she put her hand in her pocket to grasp her pendant.

"Come on…" Bruce put a hand on her shoulder reassuringly as they both left the house.

"Jet's ready let's go."

Walking past the armed soldiers, they boarded the jet and she sat down next to a window and he and Natasha sat down across from her.

"You're gonna need to take off the mask, kid. Guys around here won't trust you otherwise." Natasha told her and Bruce was about to argue, but Ash held up her hand to let him know it was OK. She pulled the scarf off her face first before pulling the hood down, but she continued to avoid eye contact.

"Y'know, for an alien, you're not what I expected."

"What were you expecting?" Bruce asked, but before Natasha could answer the jet started to take off.

Gripping onto the armrests with an iron grip, Ash squeezed her eyes shut and began to breathe heavily as she saw her home planet being destroyed behind her came to mind; the one memory she remembers vividly.

"Kid?"

"Ash?"

Ash opened her eyes to see that Bruce and Natasha were looking at her worriedly.

"You OK?" Ash nodded again to Bruce's question when Natasha asked,

"Does she ever talk?"

"Yes, she does." Ash replied pointedly, surprised at the amount of courage it took for her to say that.

"Well, I'll be damned." Natasha smirked sounding semi impressed. Ash just turned away and looked out the window, eventually falling asleep to the sound of the engine.


	6. Meeting Steve Rogers

AN- Short chapter ahead and I don't intend for this to be just a tag-along story, Lumna and Astra will have their character developments further down the story.

3rd Person POV

_Three hours later…_

After a couple of hours of turbulence-filled flight, the jet finally landed and from what Bruce could see they were on a giant military-grade ship with several more jets along a runway.

"I need to go meet with someone, wake the kid up, and wait outside." Natasha told Bruce as she left the jet after it had landed on a giant ship.

"Hey, Ash…" Bruce shook her shoulder and she woke up instantly, looking around in alarm.

"Hey hey it's OK. We're here."

"Where?" She asked quietly seeing the ocean in the distance from the window.

"I honestly have no idea, but I promise we'll be in and out once we help them locate the Tesseract."

"Ok…"

Bruce and Ash got off the jet and started to wander around aimlessly, Bruce almost bumping into soldiers that were walking around, Ash grimacing nervously at the sight of the guns in their hands, until they heard,

"Dr. Banner!" And they turned to see a tall man with blonde hair in jeans and a brown coat walking next to Natasha.

"Oh yeah, they told me you'd be here." Bruce told the man as he shook his hand.

"Word is you can find the cube." The man told Bruce and I just watched their conversation from behind Bruce.

"Is that the only word on me?"

"The only word I care about." The man looked to the side to see someone trying to hide behind Bruce.

"Oh and this is Ash." Bruce turned to her trying to get her to come out from behind him.

"This is the alien?" Steve walked closer, but she just scooted further back.

"Little shy?" The man knelt down to Ash's level and held out his hand saying, "I'm Steve Rogers, but you can call me Steve."

Ash cautiously reached out her hand to shake his and Steve noticed her injector bracelet.

"What's this?" He was about to tap it when Ash pulled it away shaking her head. Steve held his hands up in a surrendering motion.

"Ok, I won't ask."

To take the attention off of Ash, Bruce directed to Steve,

"Must be strange for you, all of this." He was gesturing to the soldiers marching around in formations and military equipment being carried around.

"Well, this is actually kind of familiar." Steve answered looking around with nostalgia.

"Why would it be strange for him?" Ash quietly asked Bruce, but Steve heard and answered for him,

"It's been about 100 years since I've been on a military base."

"I thought humans couldn't live that long?" Ash titled her head in curiosity.

"Well, I haven't exactly been awake the whole time."

Ash was about to ask what that was supposed to mean, but was interrupted with,

"Gentlemen, you may wanna step inside. It's gonna get a little hard to breathe." Natasha came up behind them to warn them as the ship started to shake and the crew members were strapping down jets on the runway.

"Is this is a submarine?" Steve asked as he looked around.

"What's a submarine?" Ash asked curiosity as she tried to peer over the edge of the ship, but Bruce kept her back.

"Really? They wanted us in a submerged pressurized metal container?" Bruce asked dubiously until the entire ship started to shake even more and the three of them moved to the edge to see huge propellers moving the ship out of the water.

"OH, NO. THIS IS MUCH WORSE!" Bruce yelled over the propellers and Ash just smiled lightly, clutching her cloak a little bit tighter as the ship rose higher into the air.

"We better get inside then!" Steve started to walk away and Bruce and Ash were about to follow when a huge wind gusted up from the propellers, making Ash lose her grip on her cloak and it flew away into the ocean.

"Bummer… well better that than us." Steve noted as they hurried to get inside.

"How am I supposed to hide now…?" Ash asked worriedly. Bruce didn't answer but gave her a side hug as they made it inside.

"We should hurry before we get blown away too." Bruce lightly joked as they hurried even faster inside.


	7. Test Time

AN- Sorry it's been a while for the few of you actually reading this story, but school can be a pain when it comes to free time

3rd Person POV

Steve, Bruce, and Ash were escorted below deck into the main bridge where SHIELD agents were seen working on computers and Agent Hill was alerting Nick Fury,

"We're at lock, sir."

"Good. Let's vanish."

From the outside, the light reflection panels activated and rendered the whole Helicarrier invisible.

"Gentlemen and miss." Fury directed toward Steve, Bruce, and Ash.

As Steve was pulling out 10 dollars to give to Fury, Bruce and Ash started walking around the bridge, but were discouraged from leaving by two armed soldiers at the exit. Fury walked over to the two and told Bruce,

"Doctor, thank you for coming."

"Thanks for asking nicely. So, uh... how long are we staying?" Bruce asked nervously, keeping Ash close.

"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the clear."

"Where are you with that?" Fury turned to another man by a computer to answer that question.

"We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cellphones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us." Phil Coulson reported from his position by one of the computers, where Ash noticed that Natasha was looking at a photo of a man with an intense glare as she told them,

"That's still not gonna find them in time."

"You have to narrow the field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?" Bruce asked them.

"How many are there?"

"Call every lab you know, tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm based on cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places. Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

"Agent Romanoff, would you show Dr.Banner to his laboratory, please." Fury directed Natasha and she nodded before leading them away.

"You're gonna love it, Doc. We got all the toys." Natasha told him as they walked off the bridge and into a hallway.

"This is your lab for now." Natasha gestured to a room that had all sorts of equipment in it.

"Thanks."

"Kid, you're gonna need to come with me to the Med Bay."

"What?" Bruce questioned.

"They need to see just how stable she is before they just let her leave."

"Oh no no no you are not experimenting on her." Bruce stood in front of Ash protectively.

"We just need to make sure that she won't," Nat mimicked an explosion with her hand before continuing, "if we just let her walk out of here."

"I'll be... OK." Ash assured Bruce somewhat hesitant as she came out from behind.

"I'll be there with her the whole time." Nat told them as Ash walked over to her and they left Bruce to work before he could argue anymore.

As they walked down the long hallway, Ash looked up at Nat and asked,

"Who was that man on the screen?"

"He's an agent who's been compromised by Loki." Nat answered stiffly.

"Who is he to you? I can tell he means something to you."

"What are you, a telepath?"

"No, my people are... were extremely intuitive." Ash looked down after she corrected herself, Nat watching her right as they entered the med bay.

The doctor was already there, dressed in a white coat with her hair up in a low ponytail as her grayish-blue eyes scanned her charts on the clipboard in her hand

"Hello... Ash, I'm Doctor Miller and I'll be your medical chief for today." She held her hand out and Ash took it cautiously, taking care not to reveal her bracelet.

"Agent Romanoff." She gave Nat a professional head shake and Nat nodded back saying,

"Newbie."

"OK says here we need to take a physical analysis, a blood sample, an MRI, and an x-ray scan." She reported perkily.

"I don't know what any of those are..." Ash informed Dr. Miller nervously.

"Just sit down on that table right there so we can check your temperature, pulse, and take some blood. It'll pinch a little bit, but you should be fine." Miller pulled on some blue gloves before rummaging through a cabinet for the needle and alcohol swab as Ash seated herself on the bed as she was told and Nat stood off to the side watching the two of them.

"So, this," She held up a small, pinching device, "will measure your heart rate and blood pressure. This, " She held up a wand looking device with a half-sphere on the end, "will take your temperature."

She put the clamp over one of Ash's fingers before placing the wand in the center of her forehead and moving it around from side to side and up and down.

Taking the clamp off, she took some notes on her clipboard, muttering things about 'abnormal heart rate' and 'running a fever' neither of which Ash knew the meaning of.

"I need you to hold out your arm for me so I can clean it." She took out a small square of a cloth that smelled weird from where Ash was sitting, making her squirm a bit. She complied as the crook of her arm was disinfected and the needle was thrust into her arm, with a little bit of difficulty, surprising them both. The needle was filled with a yellowish-orange liquid and Miller mumbled more about possible "genetic abnormalities" and "irregular densities" as she took more notes on her clipboard.

"Alright, now we need you to lie down for an MRI scan so we can see inside of you." Miller told Ash as she walked over to a smaller room within the room,

"You're also going to need to take that off and any other metal you have on you."

Miller pointed with her pen to Ash's injector bracelet and she cautiously took it off, took her pendant out of her pocket, and handed them to Nat for safekeeping before rubbing the sore spot where the injector had indented into her skin and where the needle mark had begun to disappear with a pinprick of bronze light. After that, Nat showed Ash where to go and helped her to get up onto the platform.

"Now we need you to remain still and breath when the lights tell you to. Agent Romanoff, you'll have to step outside for this."

"I'll be right outside." Nat assured Ash as she looked nervously at the machine she was about to be put into and Nat stepped out of the mini room.

"Alright, here we go." Miller informed them as the scan was started. A few minutes in, Ash started to feel uncomfortable as she felt the energy start to build up inside of her, but it remained inside of her, thankfully.

After about 9 minutes, the scan was completed and Ash sat up clutching the edge of the bed with an iron grip like back on the jet.

"You OK?" Nat came over to her, clamped the bracelet back onto her wrist, and helped her off as Ash just nodded and breathed deeply to calm herself.

On the way back to the lab, Nat handed Ash her pendant and asked,

"Who're they?"

"My mother and my little sister," Ash opened up the pendent to point to the picture of her and her family before pausing at the second photo, "I don't remember who this boy is though."

"He must be special if you have a picture of him with you." Nat smirked lightly as they got to the lab.

Bruce was still working on his algorithm when the two of them entered and Nat whispered something to him before she left.

"What happened?" Ash inquired about their private conversation.

"She was just telling me that your results should be ready to view in about two hours."

"Ok..." Ash nodded before Bruce kneeled down to her level and told her,

"You were very brave to go through that alone, but try to stay close from here on out, OK?"

"OK." Ash nodded once to show she understood before he smiled and ruffled her hair a bit making her smile too.

"Come on, I'll show you how to use some of this stuff to help me." Bruce motioned to what he was working on and Ash smiled before running over and listening as he taught her how to use a computer.


	8. Too Many New Faces

3rd Person POV with Ash and Bruce

An hour later, they were working on the Chitauri scepter that had been brought in from the recent mission to Germany when they saw a man being escorted by several SHIELD agents in the hallway closest to the lab. The man had long black hair, was wearing green robes, and had piercing eyes that looked at them both through the glass as he smirked at Bruce in particular.

Bruce rubbed his head tiredly and glanced down at Ash when she grimaced,

"I have a bad feeling about that man..."

"Don't worry, we'll be out of here soon." He assured her and she just held onto his hand like a child would to their parents.

"Come on," Natasha appeared in the doorway, "They're about to brief us on a new development."

"Alright," Bruce nodded and they left.

Ash's POV

We were led back to the main bridge, after Nat explained the situation, where there was a new person on board. He had on what looked like armor from ancient times, long blonde hair and a beard, and he carried a giant hammer in his hand.

"I'm sorry who is this?" Bruce asked.

"I am Thor, son of Odin and brother to your prisoner Loki. Who might you two be?" 'Thor spoke in a deep voice that frightened me a bit.

"Uh Bruce Banner and this is Ash."

"You're a Chrysinthean?" Thor asked pointing to me.

"A what?" Nat questioned in disbelief.

"A race of beings I thought was only a myth until just now."

"I can assure you that I am very real." I told him.

"Do you know about where she came from?" Bruce questioned.

"No, all I know is that they were everywhere, yet nowhere with powers beyond mortal belief."

"Shouldn't she know all this?" Hill questioned but I responded with a quiet,

"No..." Before putting a hand in my pocket and grasping my pendant.

"When she crashed in Narora, she lost most of her memories. She remembers her family because of a photo and her planet's destruction because of the... circumstances she came here for, but not much else." Bruce explained for me as I looked down in sadness.

Just before they could say anymore, we saw on a monitor that Fury was talking to Loki as he was locked into a large, cylindrical glass cell.

"In case it's unclear. You try to escape. You so much as scratch that glass." After pushing a button on a console the hatch below the cage opened up to the outside, making wind rush inside.

"Thirty thousand feet, straight down in a steel trap. You get how that works?!" After closing the hatch, Fury he points at Loki and says,

"Ant."

Fury points back to the button he pushed to open up the hatch.

"Boot." Fury closed up the drop hatch, still glaring pointedly at Loki.

"It's an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me." Loki confessed.

"Built for something a lot stronger than you."

"Oh, I've heard." Loki looks directly into the camera that was being viewed in the bridge.

"The mindless beast, makes play he's still a man." Bruce watched the screen and I looked up at him with concern before Loki decided to continue, "How desperate are you, that you call upon such lost creatures to defend you?"

"How desperate am I? You threaten my world with war. You steal a force you can't hope to control. You talk about peace and you kill cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did." Fury addressed Loki with seriousness.

"Ooh. It burns you to have come so close. To have the Tesseract, to have power, unlimited power. And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share, and then to be reminded what real power is."

"Well, you let me know if Real Power wants a magazine or something." Fury scoffs before he walks off leaving Loki in his cell as he smirks to the camera again. It was silent until Bruce broke it with,

"He really grows on you, doesn't he?"

"Loki's gonna drag this out." Steve announced before turning to Thor asking, "So, Thor, what's his play?"

"He has an army called the Chitauri." I felt a chill down my spine at the mere mention of that name, but I had no idea why as Thor continued, "They're not of Asgard or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract.

"An army? From outer space?" Steve asked dubiously.

"So he's building another portal. That's what he needs Erik Selvig for." Bruce started to explain.

"Selvig?" Thor questioned and I could tell he was worried about said human.

"He's an astrophysicist."

"He's a friend."

"Loki has him under some kind of spell, along with one of ours." Nat told Thor with intensity in her voice.

"I wanna know why Loki let us take him. He's not leading an army from here." Steve thought out loud, but Bruce countered with,

"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on him."

"Have care how you speak." Thor warned Bruce as he told him, "Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he's my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days." Nat bluntly stated.

"He's adopted."

"I think it's about the mechanics." Bruce announced and asked, "Iridium, what did they need the Iridium for?"

"It's a stabilizing agent." Another man wearing a suit with a glowing light in his chest with Coulson by his side as they talked in low voices about 'keeping love alive', whatever that meant.

"Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at SHIELD." The man casually sauntered over to the main console as I whispered to Bruce,

"Who is that?"

"Tony Stark."

I recalled him telling me a few things about Tony Stark, about how he created weapons in his company, Stark Industries, but recently began working on clean energy sources, including one in a building of his.

"No hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing." Tony went over to Thor to pat him on the shoulder before referring back to the Iridium, "Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long as Loki wants." He stopped at the main console before pointing to outside the windows,

"Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the topsails." Making everyone working on a computer stop and look at him in disbelief right before he shouted, "That man is playing GALAGA! Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did." He then proceeds to cover his eye and look around where he's standing asking,

"How does Fury see these?"

"He turns." Hill answered straightforward.

"Sounds exhausting." Tony began to tap and swipe away at the screens in front of him as he continued his explanation,

"The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, "

As Tony continued to tap away at the screens, I noticed him place a small device under the desk of one of the consoles, but no one else seemed to notice so I kept quiet,

"Something to kick start the cube." Clapping his hands together for dramatic emphasis, which I suspected he enjoyed doing.

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Hill questioned him looking, almost, impressed.

"Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?" Tony asked in disbelief.

"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve asked and Bruce started with,

"He'd have to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin-"

"And that would just be to break through the Coulomb barrier." I finished the sentence, making everyone look at me in surprise, but Tony continued still,

"Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect."

"Well, if he could do that he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion."

"And with any reactor on the planet." I finished Bruce's explanation and everyone was still looking at me.

"I do my reading." I meekly informed before Tony told us,

"Finally, people who speak English."

"Is that what just happened?" Steve asked in disbelief as Tony reached out to shake our hands, pausing a moment to look at my bracelet.

"You're the nuclearly unstable alien?"

"Yes... and I'm already aware that I'm not what you expect in extraterrestrial life." I told Tony unamused.

"Cool." He let go of my hand to shake Bruce's, leaving me stunned that that was all he had to say after everyone else had been more questioning of me.

"It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

"Thanks." Bruce answered looking down.

"Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube. I was hoping you might join him and... Ash." Fury explained to Tony as he walked into the room.

"Let's start with that stick of his. It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon." Steve interjected into the conversation.

"I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys." Fury continued heatedly.

"Monkeys? I do not understand." Thor started but Steve answered quickly,

"I do! I understood that reference." Everyone looked at him as he smiled, proud to have understood at least one topic from the conversation.

"Shall we play, doctor and... mini doc?" Tony asked Bruce and directed the last part to me questioningly.

"Let's play some." Bruce responded as we left the room and made our way back to the lab.


	9. Tensions and Test Results

Ash's POV

Bruce, Tony, and I were on our way back to the lab when Tony asked out of nowhere, gesturing to my bracelet,

"So what is that... thing on her wrist, because it looks like an accident waiting to happen?"

"It's concentrated ionized radiation, it helps to keep her radiation at bay when her emotions heighten." Bruce explained.

"Well I mean obviously, but that would degenerate a human, what makes her so different?"

"Well, we'll see once the test results are done."

"Ahhhh test results..." Tony mused to himself as we approached the lab before blurting out,

"Spoiler alert, she's gonna have to wear a protective containment suit if she ever wants to leave this place." We look to Tony in question as he continued, "I've already seen her file on her accident and that much experimental gamma radiation was bound to destabilize her on a cellular level, if she was human."

"Well she's not and that's what saved her life." Bruce finished just as we got to the lab and we went in and got to work, running more tests on the scepter.

Bruce took a scanner and waved it over the scepter, Tony tapped away at the screens, and I tried to use a small-handheld screen to make some calculations.

"The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract." Bruce reported from his position.

"Though at this rate, it's gonna take weeks to process." I noted from the information on the tablet that included a small, striped rectangle.

"If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops." Tony input some commands and suddenly the striped bar on my screen was moving faster. Bruce chuckled before joking,

"All I packed was a toothbrush."

"I wanted to pack a book..." Ash smiled shyly as Tony smiled as well.

"You know, you two should come by Stark Towers sometime. Top ten floors, all RD. You'd love it, it's candy land." Tony recommended while walking over to Bruce.

"Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke...Harlem. And Ash doesn't handle... people very well."

It feels more like people can't handle me... Ash thought to herself.

"Well, I promise a stress-free environment. No tension. No surprises."

A small zapping noise caught my attention right before an,

"OW!"

I looked up in surprise to see Tony had a small rod in his hand and was looking at Bruce as he was clutching his side. I was about to react defensively when Bruce made the 'I'm OK' signal so I calmed down.

"Hey!" Steve's voice called out and I saw that he was entering the lab as Stark asked,

"Nothing?"

"Are you nuts?" Steve came over to Tony to scold him, but he was ignored as Tony asked Bruce,

"You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"

"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve questioned seriously.

"Funny things only."

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny. No offense, doctor and... Ash."

"No, it's alright. We wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things and Ash couldn't control her fear."

"You're tiptoeing, big man. You need to strut."

"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark."

"You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables." Tony reasoned and I zoned out to focus on the calculations to be made on the "tablet".

I snapped back to reality after watching Steve walk out of the lab, a sense of indignance radiating off of him as he left.

"That's the guy my dad never shut up about? Wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice." Tony wondered out loud.

"The guy's not wrong about Loki. He does have the jump on us."

"If he makes a move at the right time, it could be devastating for everyone." I thought out loud, but continued to hold my silence as I listened to the rest of their conversation.

"What he's got is an ACME dynamite kit. It's gonna blow up in his face, and I'm gonna be there when it does."

"And we'll read all about it."

"Uh-huh. Or you two'll be suiting up like the rest of us."

"Ah, see. I don't get a suit of armor, neither does Ash. I'm exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare. And she's only indestructible to a certain point, her core is like her heart, one shot there and-" Bruce snapped his fingers for emphasis before trailing off, "She's done for..."

"You know, I've got a cluster of shrapnel, trying every second to crawl its way into my heart." Tony stopped to tap the ring of glowing blue on his chest, "This stops it. This little circle of light. It's part of me now, not just armor. It's a... terrible privilege."

"But you can control it."

"Because I learned how."

"It's different."

Banner tries to read the computer screen, but Tony slides the data aside with his finger so the two can see face-to-face.

"Hey, I've read all about your accident. That much gamma exposure should have killed you."

"So you're saying that the Hulk... the other guy... saved my life? That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what?"

"I guess we'll find out."

Banner and Stark get back to work at their respective computers.

"You might not like that."

"You just might."

There was a tense silence until a knock sounded at the door and they turned to see Dr. Miller with a thick folder in her hand.

"I have the results of Ash's tests and you're gonna want to follow up on requirements with Director Fury." Dr. Miller handed Bruce the packet and gave me a little wave, which I returned with a small smile. Bruce thanked her and she left, leaving him to start flipping through the packets.

"What does it say for requirements?" Tony asked knowingly.

"'Patient will need to wear a specialized containment suit', I suppose you've already seen it?" Bruce asked Tony after he had trailed off from reading the required result.

"Yep, made some modifications to it seeing as how their initial design was... poorly done."

"Ok?"

"What else does it say?" I asked nervously.

"Yeah what type of alien is she even?" Tony asked as he took one of the packets from the folder and flipped through it.

"Well, according to Thor, I'm a Chrysinthean and it sounds familiar, but I'm not sure..."

"Your muscle and bone density are way beyond what a human's should be, yet your entire body weight is less than anyone on this ship and your blood shows a new element we've never seen before." Bruce showed me the papers that showed me my skeleton and notes made after the blood extraction.

"Ooh a new element? Been there, done that" Tony looked at the papers in interest.

"Her DNA is constantly fluctuating to suit her environment I supposed it should be called..."

"Polynium?" I suggested, surprised that that name came to me so quickly.

"Sounds boring," Tony turned away to study another packet, "Huh, says here she has three hearts and stomachs, and her bones are hollow."

"That's not normal to human standards." Bruce stated and I just sat there taking this all in, trying to see if it was jogging any memories.

"Neither is my fifth finger." I blurted out and they both looked at me weirdly.

"On my planet almost everyone had four fingers, the pinky was considered useless and a disorder." I explained holding them up.

"Then how would you flip someone off?" Tony asked dubiously.

"What does-" I was about to ask when Bruce made a face saying I didn't want to know and I closed my mouth.

"Did you just remember that?" Bruce realized I had never told him that fact before.

"It just came to me, just like with the Polynium name."

"So there is some hope in you regaining your memories."

"And what if she doesn't?" Tony inquired, "What if she never figures out where she comes from."

"Then, I do not know what I'm going to do..." I whispered quietly. After a few seconds of silence, Tony walked over to me and looked me dead in the eyes,

"What's past is past, who you are now should be what matters, hm?" He went back over to his workbench as he went to work on something and Bruce continued to flip through the packets of test results, leaving me to process Tony's words.


	10. More Tensions

Ash's POV

Bruce, Tony, and I continued to work in the lab, but not on the scepter as we were originally ordered to do. Instead, Tony was teaching me to hack into secure files as he explained that the device he attached to the main console when he first showed up was doing so.

"So if this is equal to that unless…?" I looked up to Tony questioningly as he nodded and I continued with the line of code all the way to the end. I had finished it when I looked over to the "loading" sign, as I found out it was called when Fury walked in looking aggravated as he demanded,

"What are you doing, Mr. Stark?"

"Uh...kind of been wondering the same thing about you." Tony responded pulling away from where he had been helping me to go over to the larger adjustable screen.

"You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract."

"We are. The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile." Bruce told him as he came over to where I was sitting instinctively.

"And you'll get your cube back, no muss, no fuss." Tony tapped at the screen in front of him as some encrypted files showed up, "What is PHASE 2?"

Abruptly, Steve smacked a giant weapon onto the lab table with enough force to scare me off my seat and nearly fall onto the floor had Bruce not caught me and pulled me behind him.

"PHASE 2 is SHIELD uses the cube to make weapons." Steve looked furious at the use of weaponry, looking over to the three of us, Tony in particular before adding, "Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow."

"Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're…" Fury started to explain before Tony pulled up a file that contained blueprints for a missile using the Tesseract's energy as a power source,

"I'm sorry, Nick." He moved the screen to show everyone the plans for the weapon, "What were you lying?"

"I was wrong, director. The world hasn't changed a bit." Steve was practically seething with disappointment as Thor and Natasha entered the room, Nat keeping her gaze on me and Bruce before he asked her with slight agitation in his voice,

"Did you know about this?"

"You wanna think about removing yourselves from this environment, doctor?"

"Oh, we were in Calcutta, we were pretty well removed."

"Loki's manipulating you."

"And you've been doing what exactly?"

"Aside from pretending to be on our side." I spoke up upset at this turn of events, just as I was beginning to think that these people were trustworthy.

"You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you."

"Yeah, and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy. I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction." Bruce pointed to the screen and Fury hesitated before he answered, pointing to me and Thor,

"Because of them."

"Me?" We both questioned in confusion and we looked at each other in concern before facing back to Fury as he explained,

"Last year earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. A year before that, we got call of an alien who could light fires just by walking by, spreading radiation poisoning wherever they went, and we learned that not only are we not alone, not just in this galaxy, but we are hopelessly, and hilariously, outgunned.

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet." Thor tried to defend himself and his people and so did I by arguing,

"And my people despised war of any kind and wanted nothing to do it."

"But you're not the only people out there, are you?" Fury asserted, leaving us silent, "And you're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched, they can't be controlled."

"Like you controlled the cube?" Steve argued back toward Fury as Thor stated,

"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. It is the signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war."

"A higher form?" Steve questioned in disbelief and I felt my skin prickle as everyone's arguments just blended together as I held my ears trying, and failing, to block out their angry voices until Bruce took my wrist in his to calm me down right before he argued,

"It's his M.O., isn't it? I mean, what are we, a team? No, no, no. We're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're... we're a time-bomb."

"You two need to step away." Fury told us stepping forward when Tony placed a hand on Steve's shoulder asking,

"Why shouldn't they let off a little steam?"

"You know damn well why! Back off!" He retorted angrily pushing Tony's hand off, offending him enough to start another heated argument,

"Oh, I'm starting to want you to make me."

"Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?"

"Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist."

"I know guys with none of that worth ten of you. Yeah, I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you."

"I think I would just cut the wire."

"Always a way out... You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero."

"A hero? Like you? You're a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle!"

There was a tense silence and in those few seconds I felt an odd sensation in the back of my head, like something bad was about to happen, but I couldn't determine what as Steve got close to Tony's face challenging him,

"Put on the suit, let's go a few rounds."

"You people are so petty... and tiny." Thor laughed at everyone in the room before Bruce muttered,

"Yeah, this is a team…"

"Agent Romanoff, would you escort Dr.Banner back to his…" Fury started to order Nat until Bruce interjected,

"Where? You rented my room. Or are you going to put us in Ash's room?"

"The cell was just in case…"

"In case you needed to kill me, but you can't! I know! I tried!" I looked up to Bruce in worried question as he started to explain, "I got low. I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out! So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good, until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk!"

Bruce's grip tightened around my wrist making me wince in pain as he unknowingly pulled the scepter off its stand, "You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff? You wanna know how I stay calm?"

I noticed Fury and Nat put their hands towards their holstered weapons, readying them for use when Steve calmly told Bruce,

"Doctor Banner... put down the scepter." He looked down to his hand to see the scepter, looking at it in question before looking to me and releasing his grip on my wrist to see that he had unknowingly crushed it enough to leave red marks on my skin.

A few seconds later, the devices started beeping, signaling that the trace subroutine had been completed and Bruce put the scepter down to check the results,

"Sorry, kids. You don't get to see my little party trick after all." Bruce directed to Nat as we walked over to the monitor,

"Sorry about that kid…" Bruce quietly apologized to me as I rubbed the red marks before I assured him quietly,

"It's OK…"

"You've located the Tesseract?" Thor questioned and I nodded in response to his question.

"I can get there faster." Tony told us before he and Steve initiated in another argument making me tune out as I helped Bruce to open the results, showing that small traces were right outside the ship,

"Oh, my...!"

Suddenly, a blast from the outside blew up the room sending everyone in different directions. Blinded by dust and rubble, I vaguely felt myself falling into the dark and my head collided with something metal from the ringing that sounded after I hit it and blacked out from the collision.


	11. The Hulk Unleashed

3rd Person POV with Natasha

Nat, Bruce, and Ash had all fallen down to the equipment room when the explosion sounded off, Nat's leg trapped under a giant pipe, Ash unconscious next to her, and Bruce groaning in pain a little ways from her.

"I'm okay." She answered her comms before looking over to Ash as her face was streaked with her bright orange blood and then to Bruce who was growling to himself and gripped his hair, "We're okay, right?"

He continued struggling to prevent unleashing the Other Guy as Nat tried to get her leg free while talking to him,

"Doctor... Bruce, you gotta fight it. This is just what Loki wants. We're gonna be okay. Listen to me."

"Hey are you OK?" She furiously waved away two SHIELD agents who were coming their way and, seeing the current situation, wisely left the room as fast as they'd come in.

"We're gonna be okay. Alright? I swear on my life I will get you and the kid out of this, you two will walk away, and never…"

**"Your life?"** Bruce's voice had deepened and now had a threatening tone to it as the transformation passed the point of return.

"Bruce." Nat pleaded as the transformation was almost complete, but she still saw some trace of the Dr. in his eyes before he turned away and fully transformed. Grunting some more as the "Hulk" roared furiously, Nat freed her leg and quickly picked Ash up.

"They were right, you _are_ super light."

Turning to look back at the Hulk, she saw him glare angrily back with fury in his eyes and hurried to roll under the turbines as he started to chase after them. Running across the catwalk even as the Hulk tried to pull out the metal bottom from beneath her feet as she clutched Ash with one arm as she used her other to maneuver her way through the pipes.

"Come on kid, I can't fight and baby you at the same time." Nat tried to quietly shake Ash awake. With some success, Ash's eyes pinched up before fluttering open, opening fully when she saw that Nat was holding her.

"N-no, put me down." Ash struggled weakly in her grip as she was starting to wake up more,

"Fine." Nat dropped her to the ground harshly, making a loud *Clang* ring out, making her instantly regret doing so.

"Look, I know you're mad right now-"

"I am _furious_, all along you made it seem as though I could trust you when you have been lying to us!" Ash cried out until Nat slapped her hand over her mouth and pulled her under a pipe as the Hulk's snorts came closer before going further away from their location.

"_Listen_, you're going to hang onto me while I get us out of here and you're not going to give me any grief about it, _got it_?!" Nat harshly whisper commanded Ash with dead seriousness in her voice, making Ash widen her eyes in fear before rapidly nodding her head.

Releasing her mouth, Ash latched herself onto Nat's back like a koala with her arms around her neck and her legs around her waist, situating herself to where Nat could pull out and aim her gun with ease as she crept around with her gun raised, flinching at every sound.

"What exactly is happening?" Ash whispered right into Nat's ear, annoying her to the point of rolling her eyes.

*ROAR!*

They turned to see that the Hulk was towering over them, making Ash bury her face into Nat's hair. Strategically, Nat shot the pipe above the Hulk's face, forcing steam out long enough to distract him as Nat took off with Ash clinging to her back down a long corridor.

Quickly glancing behind her as she charged through, she saw that the Hulk was quickly catching up with them and reached her arms back to move Ash forward off her back as the Hulk swung his fist into Nat's side, hitting her full power, but barely grazing Ash as she was released from Nat's grip when she went flying into the wall.

Gasping in pain, Nat backed herself against a wall as the Hulk prepared to backhand her until a silver blur knocked him back through a wall. Sighing in relief, Nat crawled her way over to Ash, who was on the verge of passing out again from the impact against the floor.

"Kid, you need to get as far away from here as you can, OK?"

"N-no, I c-can reason with him, he w-would not harm me." Ash swayed on her feet a bit before bracing herself against the wall.

"No, get out of here _now_!" Nat yelled at Ash who, just like before, cowered under her stern tone.

Tears welling up in her eyes as she watched Thor fight off the Hulk, Ash limp ran her way through several corridors, having no idea where she was going or how much time was passing as her head throbbed intensely, until she came into a room with the cell that was holding Loki.

Ash's POV

I stood on one side of the enclosure that held Loki, but he did not know I was there as I hid behind a stack of boxes, until Thor came into the room to see the door to the cell opening.

"No!" Thor tried to charge at his brother, only to phase right through a fake Loki and end up being locked in the cell by a mind-controlled guard on another side of the room while the real Loki stood outside the cell smirking victoriously,

"Are you ever _not_ going to fall for that?"

_I have to do something…_ I thought as I snuck around behind the boxes that were stacked around the room, getting closer to Loki.

"The humans think us immortal. Should we test that?" Loki went over to the console about to push the button Fury had used earlier to threaten to drop him out of the ship.

I was prepared to blast him to stop him from dropping Thor out of the ship when I heard a grunt of pain and I peeked out to see that Coulson had knocked out the guard and was holding one of the Phase 2 weapons from earlier.

"Move away, please." Loki moved away from the switch with his hands raised in surrender.

"You like this? We started working on the prototype after you sent The Destroyer. Even I don't know what it does. Do you wanna find out?" Coulson asked referring to the weapon, ready to fire it when another Loki showed up from behind to impale him in the back with the scepter.

"Nooo!" Thor pounded a fist on the wall of the cell as the real Loki threw Coulson against the wall. Thor looked to his brother with hope in his eyes that he wouldn't do what he was about to do, but Loki slammed the button to release the cell and Thor was gone... Just. Like. That.

I covered my mouth, letting the tears I had been holding in stream down my face when I heard Coulson start to speak softly with Loki,

"You're gonna lose."

"Am I?"

"It's in your nature."

"Your heroes are scattered, your floating fortress falls from the sky...where is my disadvantage?"

"You lack conviction."

"I don't think I-" I peeked out long enough to see that Coulson had fired the weapon at Loki, sending him flying back.

"So that's what it does..."

"Coulson!" I jumped out from my hiding space to get to Coulson as he continued to bleed out.

"Kid…" He tried to speak, but I held up a hand to silence him,

"Save your strength." I unwrapped my wrists and used the cloth to try to stem the blood as I remembered that was what Bruce would do for major bleeding. I was looking for a way to secure the wrapping when Coulson whispered weakly,

"Look out..." and I turned to see Loki maliciously smiling down at me.

I slowly got up and backed away from where I was crouched on the ground next to Coulson about to make a run for it when I felt something slam into my side, making me recoil in pain as I realized the Loki that had been in front of me had been another illusion. Loki used the blunt end scepter to pin me into place.

"You would be quite the asset in my glorious quest." Loki flipped the scepter over in his hand to where he could tap the point of the scepter to the area over my core. I felt a cold sensation rush over me before a light flared up from my core, forcing the scepter away as I felt my strength return tenfold.

Looking down to my hands as I realized I was the one still in control of them, I looked up to see that Loki was looking down at me in confusion,

"How?" I didn't give him the chance to respond as I fired a blast of flames at him, finally forcing him to retreat.

"It seemed like you didn't learn the first time." I told no one in particular as I felt the ship shift to a more stable position in the sky. I was clutching my burning side when Fury came rushing into the room and made his way to Coulson.

"Sorry, boss. They got rabbeted…" Coulson reported losing more and more strength with every passing second.

"Just stay awake. Eyes on me!" Fury order him, forcing Coulson to look up by grasping the side of his head

"No... I'm clocked out here..."

"Not an option."

"It's okay, boss. This was never going to work... if they didn't have something... to…" Coulson breathed his last breath before he could finish his sentence, making Fury back away in an unspoken grief as more people came into the room.

"Agent Coulson is down." Fury announced into his comm set as I felt my energy start to drain at the sight of Coulson's unmoving form.

"They're here…"

"They called it…"

I completely fell to the ground as I fell back out of consciousness for the second time that day alone.


	12. Suiting Up

Ash's POV

"Hmmm...?" I slowly peeled my eyes open to find myself on a bed in a white room similar to where Dr. Miller ran the checkup on me. Looking down at myself, I saw that I was wearing a uniform similar to the soldiers, but without the weaponry or protective padding attached.

I quickly sat up remembering all that had happened within the last hour alone when I noticed the leather straps on my wrists.

"Why?!" I growled to myself as I struggled against them, more angry than afraid at that point.

"Because you were thrashing around when they tried to move you." I looked up to see Agent Hill before she made her way over to me to unbuckle the restraints.

"Fury wants you in the conference room now." She stated before turning to leave the room.

"Why should I listen to the one who has been lying to us?" I asked silently seething making her stop and turn to face me,

"Because you might want to hear what he has to say."

Grudgingly I followed, now intrigued by what she meant by that, as I rubbed the red rims on my wrists when we arrived at the conference room where Fury, Steve, and Tony were already waiting inside.

"Nice of ya to join us kid." Steve told me lightly, but I just sat down in the seat farthest from them with a glare on my face.

"Where's Bruce?" I demanded to know before Tony cut off Steve with,

"Apparently Eye-Patch decided to have him blasted off the ship for our 'safety'."

"What?!" I was about to bolt out of my seat when Fury held up a hand and told me,

"Please wait until after before you decide to start barbequing people."

I reluctantly sat back down before Fury pulled out a stack of small pieces of paper as he directed to Steve,

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket. Guess he never did get you to sign them."

Steve picked a few of the papers up to reveal that they were pictures of him in his uniform, but crimson stains now blotted the surface.

"We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you." He looked at me as he said that but I looked down at the last healing wounds on my hands, "Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming."

Fury took a deep breath before going on to explain to us as Tony, Steve, and I listened intently.

"Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea, Stark knows this, called The Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes."

Tony got up rapidly after Fury finished and walked off, clearly not wanting to hear anymore.

"Well, it's an old fashioned notion." Fury told us as Tony walked off with Steve following him shortly after, leaving just me, Fury, and Hill.

"Is that why you brought me here? To try and turn me into a hero?" I questioned half unconvinced by his speech.

"I brought you here to see if you had the potential to learn to be a hero."

I stood up and walked away in the direction Tony and Steve went before stopping and saying to them without facing them,

" I couldn't even if I wanted to..."

I continued walking back into the containment center where Coulson was killed where Tony and Steve were arguing once again,

"Is this the first time you've lost a soldier?" Steve questioned before Tony retorted with,

"We are not soldiers! I am not marching to Fury's fife! And neither is the kid." Tony acknowledged my presence as I walked forward and asked,

"Do you two do anything besides argue?"

"He's right though, you may not be a soldier, but if you want to help protect this planet like you couldn't your own, then you might have to learn to be a hero." Steve directed to me before turning to Tony and saying, "Right now we've got to put that aside and get this done. Now Loki needs a power source, if we can put together a list..."

"He made it personal." Tony noted out loud.

"That's not the point."

"That is the point. That's Loki's point. He hit us all right where we live. Why?"

"In order to drive us apart, but..." I suggested but sensed that there was more to it than that, as acknowledged by Tony as he continued with,

"He had to conquer his greed, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right? That's what he wants. He wants to beat us and he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience."

"Right, I caught his act at Stuttengard."

"Yeah. That's just a preview, this is opening night. Loki's a full-tilt diva." Tony emphasized his point with waving hand gestures, "He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built in the skies with his name plastered..." Tony froze right in the middle of his sentence making Steve ask,

"What is it?"

"Sonofabitch!" Before he ran off to get to a computer, me following him from behind since he was the closest one I could trust at the moment.

When he did get to a console, he began rapidly typing before he told me without removing his gaze from the screen,

"Hey Lil' Red, I think you might want to suit up because that outfit won't do you any good in battle."

"With what?" I started to question before a space in the wall opened up to reveal a bright orange jumpsuit with dark red outlines on the legs of the pants and bright yellow trimming on the collar and on the sleeve and pant cuffs and a silver armband similar to my bracelet around the upper left sleeve.

"Yeah I may have tweaked it a bit and that armband should work better, for now anyway." Tony commented as I walked closer to the suit to get a closer look at it.

Closing my eyes thinking about how I could finally do something after I failed to save my home, Bruce, and Coulson, I reopened my eyes with a new light in them as I pulled the suit down from its stand with determination burning within me.

A few minutes later I was fully suited up with the jumpsuit over the clothes I was wearing before, my injector bracelet abandoned for the temporary armband, my uncombed hair loose around my shoulders, and a pair of black boots laced on.

"Nice suit." I heard someone comment from behind me and turned to see Nat, Steve, and the man from the screen behind me.

"Who are you?" I asked the man and he grinned at me in a wry manner before responding,

"Clint Barton, you can call me Hawkeye. And you are?"

"This is Ash she's-" I cut Nat off by stating,

"Going to be helping you fight."

"Well damn, didn't think you'd be one to fight." Nat told me with slight amusement in her tone.

"I'll do what I can to help your planet."

"Then let's move out." Steve directed us and we all walked together to the hangar where the three of them boarded an aircraft

"You are not authorized to be here..." The pilot inside tried to discourage them but Steve interrupted him with,

"Son... just don't." Before forcing him out and starting up the ship to fly out of the Helicarrier.

"You can let me out here." I pushed a button to open the back door, wind rushing into the small space when Clint yelled to me,

"What're you doin' kid!"

"Taking a chance!" I yelled back before falling backward out of the ship, leaving them to watch me fall.

Cold air blew past me as I fell through the empty air, focusing and willing all my power to converge at my hands.

In a mass of heat, my hands became engulfed in flames that propelled me through the air, positioning me to fly right beside the ship. Inside the ship, I could see Steve and Clint gaping at me while Nat sent a smiling smirk to me as we made our way to the battle ahead of us.


	13. Battle of New York Part 1

AN- _Italics_ _means over comms speech_

3rd Person POV

As Ash flies on her own for the first time, she pulls ahead of the Quinjet Nat, Steve, and Clint are in to join Tony in his Iron Man suit as he was flying ahead of them all.

"Good to see you finally operating on your own for once." Tony tells her as she flies right by his side.

"Figured the end of the world is as good a time as any other." Ash side shrugs as they make it to Stark Tower in New York, where Dr. Selvig is seen on the roof with the portal opening machine running.

"Shut it down, Dr. Selvig." Tony instructs Selvig, but in his mind-controlled state, he doesn't relent.

"It's too late! It can't stop now. He wants to show us something! A new universe." Selvig looks at the two of them with a wonder in his light blue eyes that was not fully his own.

"Okay." Tony raises a hand and fires at the machine, but the light blue forcefield around it repels the shot, ricocheting it to strike Selvig, throwing him against a small structure on the roof.

_The barrier is pure energy. It's unbreachable._ JARVIS announces before Tony tells Ash,

"New plan, you check to make sure the doc's alright and I'll deal with the Trickster King." Ash nodded to show she understood before she landed, albeit a bit off-balance, to check on Dr. Selvig as Tony walks to the indoor bar inside the building, his damaged suit being taken off before Loki tells Tony,

"Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity."

"Uh...actually, I'm planning to threaten you." Tony responded casually as he makes it to the bar.

"You should have left your armor on for that."

"Yeah, it's seen a bit of mileage. You've got the blue stick of destiny. Would you like a drink?"

"Stalling me won't change anything."

"No, no, no! Threatening. No drink? You sure? I'm having one."

"The Chitauri are coming, nothing will change that. What have I to fear?"

"The Avengers." Tony pours himself a drink as Loki looks at him confused before explaining, "It's what we call ourselves, sort of like a team. 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes' type of thing."

"Yes, I've met them."

"Yeah, takes us a while to get any traction, I'll give you that one." As Tony begins his count off he pulls on a pair of metal bracelets while Loki is turned around,

"But, let's do a headcount here. Your brother, the demi-God; a super soldier, a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend; a man with breath-taking anger management issues; an alien who is a literal hothead underneath all the quiet; a couple of master assassins, and you, big fella, you've managed to piss off every single one of them."

"That was the plan."

"Not a great plan. When they come, and they will, they'll come for you."

"I have an army."

"We have a Hulk."

"I thought the beast had wandered off."

"You're missing the point. There's no throne, there is no version of this, where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes and maybe it's too much for us, but it's all on you. Because if we can't protect the Earth, you can be damned well sure we'll avenge it." Ash slowly gets up from where she's crouched near Selvig when she sees Loki walking closer to Tony as he says,

"How will your friends have time for me, when they're so busy fighting you?" Before tapping Tony in the chest with the scepter, but it doesn't work so he tries, and fails, again before asking in confusion,

"This usually works."

"Well, performance issues. You know? One of ten-" Tony is cut off when Loki grabs him around the throat and tosses him to the floor a distance from him, startling Ash until Tony makes the same hand signal that Bruce used to signal to her that he was alright.

"JARVIS. Anytime now." Tony tries to rush his AI as Loki grabs him again and hisses in his face,

"You will _all fall_ before me."

"Deploy. Deploy!"

Ash stood there on the edge, watching as Tony fell toward the street below the building right before a bulky red missile-like shape came shooting after him, locking in on the bracelets on his wrists before encasing him in a new Iron Man suit.

After fully suiting up in midair, Tony fired up his repulsors and flew back up to Loki's level and remarked,

"And there's one other person you pissed off! His name was Phil."

Loki raised his scepter to shoot at Tony but was shot back by a fire blast coming from behind him, revealing that Ash had snuck in behind him while he was focused on Tony.

"Nice shootin' kid." Tony praised right before a burst of energy shot out of the machine on the roof and tore a hole in the sky rimmed with faltering blue, allowing several beings on strange flying machines to come through.

"Right. Army."

"Try to redirect their line of fire, I will attempt to get the people out of danger." Ash told Tony before she flew down to the ground, landing more smoothly on the steps to the cafe that was close to Stark Tower and announced to the people who were cowering from the attacks from the Chitauri,

"Please evacuate and take cover inside!"

People still looking to her in fear, they didn't notice a Chitauri raining fire toward them. Noticing its fast approach, Ash clasped her hands together to make a single fist that created a stream of fire that shot toward and melted the approaching vehicle.

"Didn't mean to do that, but I guess it's better than the alternative." Ash stared at the melted mass of metal that lay a few feet in front of her and to the crowd of people who were listening to her and clearing off the streets.

_Stark, we're heading northeast._ Ash pressed a finger to the comm in her ear to hear Nat's voice coming through before Tony snarked,

_What, did you stop for drive-thru? Swing up Park, I'm gonna lay 'em out for you._

"Don't leave me out." Ash commented wryly as she used her flames to fly up and over the buildings to locate the Quinjet that the others had been flying until she saw several small explosions followed by a much larger one coming from a few streets away from where she was.

As she approached, the source of the blasts, she saw that the wing of the ship was on fire and was going to crash down on the street.

"No..." Memories of her own ship crashing on Earth came to mind for Ash and she wasn't about to let it happen again on her watch.

Blasting toward the Quinjet at full speed, Ash braced herself against the front of the ship as it was dipping down towards the ground, before shooting her hands out and firing the biggest blast she could muster.

The force was enough to level out the ship out as Clint steered it from the inside to make a controlled crash on the street below them, but Ash was still pinned under the bow of the ship underneath the rubble.

"Kid!" Nat came running out with Clint and Steve behind her as she moved aside some of the rubble to get to Ash.

"There." Clint grabbed a hand that was reaching towards the sky and Nat struggled to help him pull Ash out of the rubble until Steve came over and lifted her out by her suit's collar like it was nothing.

Coughing and waving some dust away from her face and out of her hair, she swallowed before assuring them with a thumbs up,

"I'm alright."

"That was crazy," Clint told her before thumping her back and saying, "I like ya."

Ash was smiling up at Clint when they heard a monstrous roar coming from the hole in the sky that made the smile fade from her face. Coming out of the portal in the sky, an enormous Leviathan flew it's way out and onto Earth, weaving its way over their heads and through the surrounding skyscrapers.

Out from underneath its armor, several lines were shot out from the Levithan with Chitauri soldiers at the ends of them firing away at the civilians that were still on the streets trying to find shelter.

"No no no no no not again…" Ash gripped her head as the memory of the attack of the Chitauri and Leviathans came to her at full force with the violence they had displayed on her home planet and the sounds of pained screams as well as the sight of her dead friend flashed through her mind.

"Hey it's alright…" Nat kneeled down in front of her with both of her hands on Ash's arms in an attempt to draw her back to reality before she looked to Steve who radioed in to Tony,

"Stark, are you seeing this?"

_I'm _seeing_, still working on _believing_. Where's Banner? Has he shown up yet?_

"Banner?"

_Just keep me posted._ Tony signed off just as Steve turned back to see Nat still trying to shake Ash out of her fearful haze as her face dipped down shadowing her face.

"Alright, enough of this." Nat raised her hand, about to slap Ash when she gently put her hand on hers to stop it and she slowly stood up with a deadly determined look in her eyes.

"I won't let this world fall like my home did, not while I'm still breathing…" She lit two fires in her hands and started throwing them at any Chitauri that came close to them as the others used their respective weapons and abilities to do the same.

In the heat of battle, Ash diverged from the group to help save the few people who remained on the streets as they sought out shelter. She flew a little boy out of a Chitauri's line of fire before reuniting him with his mother at the entrance of a subway tunnel, directed a flying soldier away from the glass windows of a building that was still evacuating citizens, and saved a couple who were about to be crushed from a large chunk of a building that was damaged by a Chitauri, earning a quick thank you from the two before they ran off and she faced the soldier that had almost killed them.

"This is for what your people did to my home!" Ash unarmed the soldier by wrenching and throwing its spear away before slamming both her hands on either side of its head and melting its inner workings between her glowing hands in a moment of vengeful fury. Its last attempt to save itself by clawing at her hands was wasted before it completely shut down for the last time, making Ash feel a strange sense of satisfaction looking down at the fallen enemy.

However, once she saw what she had done, even to an enemy who had aided in the destruction of her planet, she looked to herself terrified of what she was becoming until bolts of lightning struck down from the sky, blasting several soldiers on the streets back in an enormous shockwave

"Thor." Ash smiled to herself before she flew back to where the group had been, only the God of Thunder had joined them as they were discussing their plan of action,

"How do we do this?" Nat questioned before Steve answered,

"As a team."

"I have unfinished business with Loki." Thor announced before Clint cut in as he sharpened an arrow tip,

"Yeah? Get in line."

"Let's not waste this time with pointless bickering." Ash interjected as she made her presence known to the group.

"_Thank you_." Steve emphasized before Ash nodded once and he continued with his battle plan, "Loki's gonna keep this fight focused on us and that's what we need. Without him these things could run wild. We got Stark up top, he's gonna need us-"

Steve was interrupted when they all heard the motor of a vehicle and turned to see Bruce riding in on a small, old motorcycle through the rubble on the ground.

Getting off the bike, Ash shouted his name before running to him and nearly tackling him in a hug that he returned. He looked her over to see the suit she was wearing and the dusted rubble that covered her from head to toe before releasing her and saying to the others,

"So, this all seems.. _horrible_."

"I've seen worse." Nat told him nonchalantly with a neutral expression.

"Sorry."

"No. We could use a little worse."

"Stark? We got him."

"Banner?"

"Just like you said."

"Then tell him to suit up. I'm bringing the party to you."

Out from the corner of building they could all see the Iron Man suit flying toward them with a Leviathan in close pursuit making Thor toss his hammer up ready to hit it as Nat stuttered a bit,

"I... I don't see how that's a party…"

Tony manages to swoop down enough for the Leviathan to hit the street, tearing up the asphalt as it skidded toward them.

Bruce gave Ash a little side hug before walking toward the gradually approaching Leviathan right as Steve recommended,

"Dr. Banner. Now might be a really good time for you to get angry."

"That's my secret, Captain. I'm always angry."

Right before he started to transform into the Hulk, punching the Chitauri to where it started to flip over, but didn't make it all the way when Tony shot a missile into a soft spot, making it explode from the inside. Everyone took cover somehow as the explosion came towards them, but Ash was almost left exposed until she was scooped up as the debris hit what, or rather who, ever was protecting her.

Looking up after the dust cleared, she saw that the Hulk had been the one to protect her and she smiled up at him making him put her down gently before they all saw the Leviathan crash down on the street below.

Unleashing a fearsome roar, Hulk and the others all gathered around in a circle back to back as Clint equipped an arrow, Thor readied his hammer, Nat reloaded her weapon, Steve tightened his shield strap, Tony prepared his repulsors, and Ash lit up a fire in each of her hands. After a moment, everyone looked up to see hundreds more flying Chitauri and Leviathans coming through the portal on Loki's command.

"Guys." Nat gestured to all the incoming forces that threatened to overpower them all.

"Call it, Cap." Tony told Steve as they all turned their attention to the skies before he started giving the order,

"Alright, listen up. Until we can close that portal up there, we're gonna use containment. Barton, I want you on that roof, eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Stark, you got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or you turn it to ash."

"Wanna give me a lift?"

"Right. Better clench up, Legolas." Tony informed Clint before lifting him off the ground by the back of his suit and they both flew off.

"Thor, you've gotta try and bottleneck that portal. Slow them down. You've got the lightning. Light the bastards up." Thor whirled his hammer in a circle before throwing it up to take off from the ground before Steve directed toward Nat,

"You and me, we stay here on the ground, keep the fighting here. Ash, get any stray citizens off the streets and out of buildings within the perimeter and fry any attackers who get too close. And Hulk."

Hulk turned to Steve with a growl before he pointed up and told him,

"Smash."

To which he smiled before launching himself off the ground to pummel whatever Chitarui were on the skyscrapers close by.

"Try to keep his rampage contained if you can." Steve added to Ash and she nodded before taking off to the skies, blasting any soldiers that got in her way.

AN- Sorry it took a while to write the first part of the battle scene but my break has not been as relaxing as I hoped it would be and now that I'm going back to school updates may be slow since I'll be having Robotics four days out of the week, community service club another day, and so I'll only have two "free" days. On that bummer note, I hope you enjoy the last chapters of the Avengers movie ^^


	14. Battle of New York Part 2

AN- Be warned! Some mentions of blood as well as amateur medical knowledge that shouldn't be taken too seriously ahead!

Ash's POV

After breaking off from Steve and Nat's position on the ground, I flew up to an onslaught of flying Chitauri heading toward a building that had yet to be fully evacuated, and fired several molten blasts that melted each warrior's vehicle into glowing liquid.

_You got bogey's on your six, Ash._ I heard Clint's voice and when I turned back, sure enough, more warriors were right behind me, seeking vengeance for their fallen comrades.

"I can see that." I bluntly stated.

_On my signal, fire right above their heads. _

"Ok." I flipped myself over in the air to where I was flying backward facing the threats behind me, readying one hand for a blast while the other was flying me.

_Now!_ I fired a blow right as a few arrows were sent their way and, on collision with my flames, exploded and rained fire on any Chitauri who were close by.

_Nice one Matchstick._

_Hey, I give the nicknames around here... although, Imma let you have that one since it's pretty spot-on._ Tony came onto the comms as he and Clint started chatting,

_But seriously if she's gonna be fighting with us she needs a cool call sign like... Fire girl._

"I do not approve of that name."

_Yeah neither do I… ummmm what about Spitfire?_ Tony's voice came through.

I rolled my eyes at Tony's suggestion before saying and asking,

"No, that doesn't feel right either. " I looked to my surroundings and asked, "Where's Hulk?"

_Aren't _you _supposed to be watching him?_

"I got a little _sidetracked_." I answered while spin kicking a Chitauri off its vehicle.

_A block from your current position, and he's gettin' a little rampage-y around civilians so check on them too._

"I'm on it." I let one flame in my hand die out to where I fell through the air strategically before reigniting and making it to the building the Hulk ran straight through as the people inside stood by the broken windows terrified of what was happening.

"These people are trapped, I can't see a way out of the building from here." I reported as soon as I landed among the broken shards with the people looking at me in awe and fear.

_JARVIS give'er some light._ I heard Tony through the comms before the AI's voice came through,

_A couple paces to your left in the back of the room, there should be an emergency exit to the underground basement that is not blocked by any debris but will require some persuasion to open._

"Alright, thank you."

_You are quite welcome._

"Everyone follow me please!" I ran through the wreckage to the red-lined door JARVIS directed me to before I held my hands to the bar where a lock was located and melted it enough to open.

"Everyone head down to the basement." I instructed the people and they all hurried, some limping, down the stairs until an elderly man with a thin stream of blood on his face held an unconscious little boy in his arms and pleaded,

"My grandson needs help."

"I'll see what I can do." I assured him before urging him to head down with the others and following once I was certain we wouldn't be followed by the Chitauri.

It was dark in the basement, but I lit up the space with my hand until I found a power switch to turn some lights on.

After ensuring everyone was accounted for, I announced into the comm,

"I have some injured civilians in here with no way for medical services to get down here in time," I turned back to the people, taking note of those who were sitting or leaning against others in pain before saying, "I'm going to have to stay here to help stabilize anyone who needs it until they arrive."

_You do that, just don't take too long cause we might need you in a little bit._ Steve answered and I responded an agreement before facing the people as they all tended to each other as best they could. I walked over to the man with his grandson before another man stood in between me and them in a defensive stance,

"Hey hold on, how do we know you're not one of them?"

"I am no Chitauri, I only want to help. Medical services won't arrive in time..." I assured him gently holding my hands out in a non-threatening manner.

"Please let her through." The elderly man urged as the boy let out a small whimper of pain. The other man hesitantly let me pass as I kneeled down to assess the boy's condition as he lay on the hard floor with his guardian's sweater propping his head up.

He had lost a considerable amount of blood from the size of the still-growing red spot on his side, he had a cut over his forehead, and his breathing was irregular.

"I need to cauterize the wound before it worsens, do any of you have a small piece of metal?" I asked the other people in the room after seeing the long cut on the boy's side.

"Here." A woman in a dusty red outfit handed me a small spear of pointed metal that, after cleaning it to the best of my abilities, heated it up in my hand before I lightly applied it to the boy's skin.

"Uh?" I heard the boy lightly whimper before I used my other hand to smoothen the hair out of his eyes as he looked at me and my glowing hand in wonder. I gently smiled at him before gently asking,

"Hello, does it hurt too much?"

"N-no." He answered in a little voice.

"Good," I leaned his head back from where he was straining to keep it up.

"You're... an alien?" The man asked me and I gently responded,

"Yes, my home was taken from me by the Chitauri, the beings invading your city now, but I won't let them win this time." I explained, keeping the last part of the sentence in a deadly low voice to show I meant what I said.

A few seconds later, the wound had stopped bleeding and I ripped pieces of the uniform's sleeve I wore underneath my suit to help cover the wounds.

"That should hold until medical aid arri-" I was stopped mid-sentence when the man seized me in a hug and cried,

"T-thank you... I'm... so sorry about your home."

I hesitated before returning the hug and turning to the other people to stabilize their injuries, setting a few broken bones here and there, and securing some makeshift bandages around a piece of shrapnel in someone's leg to stem the bleeding until it could be removed professionally.

"Everyone is stable down here until paramedics arrive." I stood up and spoke into the comms.

_Great cause uh Thor's gonna need you up here pronto._ Steve responded in the middle of fighting from the sounds of grunts in the background.

"Where is he?"

_Uh on top of one of those flying thingies._

"_Leviathans_, I'm on my way." I turned back to the people and announced,

"Stay here and out of sight, help should be here soon." I turned around and headed up the stairs, making it just beyond the doorway about to fly out through the broken windows when I heard behind me,

"Wait!" And I turned back to see the man who had confronted me before standing in the doorway, "Who are you?" I lifted the corner of my mouth in a half-smile before responding,

"You can call me the Ion Phoenix." Before lifting myself off the ground a few inches with my flames and flying out the windows above the buildings where I saw Thor and Hulk fighting on top of one of the Leviathans.

"I found them, now what?!" I yelled into the comms, unsure of what I was supposed to do.

_Get any civilians out of the way, they're about to bring it down!_

I flew my way down to the large building that they were steering the Levithan toward and grabbed some people out of the way before the Leviathan's giant head came crashing through the wall, sending rubble and dust flying everywhere, temporarily blinding me.

When I could see again I looked to the crashed monster in time to see Hulk punch Thor before smirking, no doubt from the bitterness he still held toward Thor after their first fight.

Thor looked ready to punch him back until I stepped in and told them,

"You both can sort through your issues with each other later, we still have work to do." I motioned to the Chitauri that were alerted to the crash and were starting to flood into the building to overwhelm us.

"Split up, take them out one by one!" Thor announced with a confident tone. I was about to protest when he and Hulk already went their separate ways, leaving me astounded at their lack of tactics before shaking it off and getting back to firing at the incoming Chitauri.

A few minutes later, all the soldiers lay dead around me and I shook my hands to extinguish the flames before Nat's voice came onto the comms,

_I can close it! Can anybody hear me? I can shut the portal down!_

_Do it!_ Steve's voice came through urgency before Tony interrupted,

_No, wait!_

_Stark, these things are still coming!_

_I got a nuke coming in, it's gonna blow in less than a minute. And I know just where to put it._

As I wondered what that meant a feeling of horror struck as I realized what he meant and flew to the top of another building closer to Stark Towers, watching with dread as Tony flew another device right up into the portal opening, disappearing into the void beyond it.

"Come on Tony…" I clutched my hands together as I waited for some sign that he was OK to show itself.

3rd Person with Ash

A few seconds later, the stream of blue energy that was feeding into the portal stopped and the hole began to warp in on itself, signaling that the portal was successfully closing.

In fear, Ash flew in the air directly under the rapidly closing portal when she saw the Iron Man suit falling back toward the ground.

Instinctively, she blasted toward Tony with all the speed she could conjure for the second time in one day, attempting to slow his descent as she grabbed a hold of the suit in one hand while the other tried to keep them propelled.

_Why is this suit so heavy?_ She thought to herself as she was dragged right down with him.

Suddenly, a roar was heard and they were both snatched out of the air by Hulk as he scraped down the side of other building to fully slow down before launching off and crashing into the street below, shielding Tony and Ash from impact.

Tony was thrown off right after landing but Ash was put down more gently as she had blacked out from the impact. Looking down at her in concern, Hulk started poking Ash's head lightly right as Steve rushed over to them to check on Tony.

While Steve ripped off Tony's face mask to make sure he was still alive and Thor, Nat, and Clint gathered around as well. Hulk had woken Ash up when her eyes groggily opened right and he turned to roar right in Tony's face making him gasp awake.

Still gasping for air, Hulk gave another roar in triumph, Ash giving a small whoop as well as Tony panicked,

"What the hell? What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me?"

Making everyone smile a little at Tony's antics before Steve spoke solemnly,

"We won." There was a moment of silence as they surveyed the destruction all around them until Tony broke it with,

"Alright. Hey. Alright. Good job, guys." He struggled to sit up before suggesting, "Let's just not come in tomorrow. Let's just take a day. Have you ever tried shawarma? There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it."

"We're not finished yet." Thor spoke up looking toward Stark Tower, making everyone but Ash realize what he meant.

"And then shawarma after."

Meanwhile, inside the Tower, Loki was struggling to pull himself up the stairs climbing out of the crater he had been beaten into by the Hulk earlier until he senses someone behind him and turned to see the whole team; Clint raising his bow ready to loose an arrow, Nat with the Chitauri scepter in her hands, Tony in his beaten suit, Steve with his shield in his hands, Thor with his hammer, Ash with flames flickering around her hands, and Hulk glaring down at him warningly.

"If it's all the same to you." Loki started as he painfully flipped himself to a leaned back sitting position, "I'll have that drink."

Hulk snorted at him as they all prepared for what they knew needed to happen next.


	15. Moving In

3rd Person POV with the Avengers

After restraining Loki to where he wouldn't be able to escape, the team met up at a blocked area with Dr. Selvig to send Thor and his brother off.

Instead of her superhero suit, Ash was wearing a black shirt under a larger button up red flannel shirt and some dark jeans which hid some one-size-too-big sneakers underneath as everyone wore more casual clothes except for two.

Thor, still in his armor, shook hands with everyone until he got to Ash and she leaped up to give him a hug that returned with one hand to pat her back.

"Have no fear Lady Phoenix, I will return soon." Thor assured her before putting her down and she went to help Bruce load the Tesseract into a glass tube.

As soon as Loki took the other end, he and Thor were off, back to Asgard.

"'Lady Phoenix'?" Bruce questioned.

"I think he was referring to my new hero's name. Ion Phoenix."

"I still say you should've run that by us before making it a thing." Clint joked before Tony cut in,

"Are you married to that name or is it still in the air?"

"Well _I_ think it sounds geeky… but fierce." Nat interjected as she handed Bruce a duffel bag and Ash a bright red backpack from the car she and Clint came in.

"Thank you?"

"See ya round kid." Nat smiled before she turned her back to head back to base with Clint as Dr. Selvig left in his car, and Tony, Bruce, and Ash left in one of Tony's cars.

"So when we get to the Tower we'll run full diagnostics make sure you won't be goin' boom anytime soon and then we'll go pick your room, sound good?" Tony directed to Ash.

"As long as there are no needles." She pointed in his face as she said that.

"Deal." Tony nodded once and Bruce ruffled her hair a bit saying,

"I'll make sure of it too."

Ash laughed a little bit before she felt her eyes start to get heavy as all the excitement started to catch up to her.

"Take a breather Red, we'll let you know when we're there." Tony told her as they stopped at a stoplight.

Ash just nodded her head and closed her eyes, falling asleep within seconds.

"She must've been exhausted to fall asleep that fast." Bruce noted as Ash started to lean her head to the side.

"No kiddin', she completely fried, burnt, and melted anything that came near anyone, she's got the power, she just needs some training."

Bruce looked like he was about to argue but stopped when he realized that Tony had a point; there was no way someone like Ash would be able to walk around like a normal person without someone wanting to capture and study her, she'd at least need to learn to defend herself without her powers.

"But hey," Tony thumped a hand on Bruce's shoulder, breaking him out of thought, "Don't worry Pep's gonna love her and make sure she's taken care of."

"Imma hold you to that Tony." Bruce joked lightly as they finally got past the stoplight and continued their way to Stark Tower.

_Short Driving Time Skip_

A few minutes later, the three of them arrived at the driveway in front of the Stark Tower lobby.

"We're here." Bruce woke Ash up with a light shake and, to his surprise, she didn't wake up with a jolt like she had before on the jet to the Helicarrier, showing either just how exhausted she was or how much she was beginning to trust herself in her new surroundings. They got out and got their things together just as Pepper was making her way over to them, rushing as fast as she could in her high heels, toward Tony in particular.

"Tony…" She threw her arms around his neck before pulling away and hitting his arm scolding,

"_Don't_ you _ever_ go flying through a space portal ever again!"

"Pep not in front of our guests." Tony told her through a corner of his mouth as she took notice of Bruce and Ash standing behind them.

"Hi," Pepper switched tones to a more friendly cheerful one as she made her way over to them and shook their hands before introducing herself, "Pepper Potts, nice to finally meet you Doctor Banner and…?" She tilted her head as she motioned to Ash.

"Lumna, but you may call me Ash. A pleasure to make your acquaintance Ms. Potts." Ash nodded her head politely as she introduced herself.

"So polite." Pepper acknowledged before turning around telling Tony,

"Let's get them inside before the crowd starts showing up." Pepper motioned to the street where already a few people were snapping photos with their phones, pointing at Ash in particular.

"C'mon." Bruce led Ash away she was waving to them in a friendly manner.

"OK," Pepper pulled out her phone and started typing something in as JARVIS announced,

_Welcome home sir._

"First things first, we need to add Dr. Banner and Ash's voices to the vocal recognition security system." Pepper held her phone out to the two of them,

"Banner."

"Lumna."

_Vocal identification set._ JARVIS announced after their voices were processed.

"Alright, let's get you to the Med Bay." A new voice sounded from behind them and they turned to see,

"Dr. Miller!" Ash exclaimed happily when she saw that the "newbie" had survived the Helicarrier events, dropping her backpack to the floor.

"Good to see you too Ash."

"Fury told me that she would be checking in on her favorite patient every now and then." Pepper notified Tony while Ash went to give Dr. Miller a hug.

"Let's go shall we?" Miller gestured ahead of her and she and Ash were on their way, chatting about how this time there'd be no needles involved in this checkup.

"She's really branching out." Bruce remarked as he watched them go before they disappeared around a corner after picking Ash's backpack up from the ground.

"Yeah, Copper Top managed her own while you were *ahem* taking your time gettin' to the fight." Tony raised an eyebrow as he coughed in the middle of his sentence.

"Yeah…" Bruce looked down a little at the "I just hope she doesn't grow up too fast, I still want her to enjoy being a kid I mean she's only 12."

"So what? Just because ya_ grow up_ doesn't mean you have to _grow up_ y'know, I mean look at me." Tony spread his arms out at the last part of his sentence. Bruce grinned as they made their way up to Tony's lab to help Bruce settle into his new workspace.

_A Few Hours Later_

"Alright, you're good to go Ash, I'll see you in a few weeks." Dr. Miller gave Ash a handshake and a quick hug before she had to leave.

Ash, swishing around the candy she had been given in her mouth, made her way over to the new lab where she and Bruce would be working in when she saw Pepper making her way there too.

"Hi Ms. Potts." Ash ran up to her to catch up with her.

"You can just call me Pepper, Ash." Pepper smiled as she let Ash walk beside her as they climbed the stairs up to the main labs.

"How are you liking Earth?" Ash looked up at Pepper with a questioning look.

"I heard you 'weren't from around here' and with the flying aliens that came out of a portal that opened in the sky, I believe it."

"I am beginning to enjoy being here and as for my 'not being from around here', I am still unsure. According to Thor I might be a Chrysinthean, but I am still unsure of what I am exactly."

"Why?"

"When I landed on this planet, I crashed into a 'power plant' and the impact made me lose some of my memories, I only remembered my name and that my planet had been destroyed, but not much else." Ash pulled her pendent out of her pocket before opening it up to show Pepper the pictures inside as they stopped walking so Pepper could examine the photos.

"This is my mother and my little sister, I can't remember their names, but I know they're my family."

"And who's the boy in this one?" Pepper pointed to the bushy-haired boy that had his arm over Ash's shoulder while she did the same to him.

"I don't know… but I know he's not related to me familiarly."

"He must be very special if you carry a picture of him around then." Pepper smiled as they began walking again, Ash still looking at the boy.

"That is exactly what Natasha said, is that supposed to mean something to you humans that I would not understand?"

"Well," Pepper sucked in her cheek in thought before saying, "It really depends on the situation and given your... situation I guess it would be better to wait and see if you remember instead of jumping to conclusions."

"Yeah I guess that would be better if it wasn't so much fun to do." Tony butted into the conversation as they arrived at the main lab.

"Always with the snappy answer." Pepper commented somewhat critically.

"Ok, so you'll be bunking down in the room at the end of the hall so feel free to start settlin' in." Tony pointed to the room that was at the end of the hall and Ash nodded in thanks before picking her backpack up from where Bruce had left it.

When she made it to the room, she looked around and gaped at how it looked: a large bed already made with some white and pastel red striped sheets and pillows, the walls were painted a light orange color, the ceiling was still white but she could see little light green crystals spread out like stars, on the wall opposite from the bed was a large flatscreen tv, there was a metal desk with a matching chair in one corner with a lamp on top and a notebook with a pen next to it, and a bookshelf stood on one side of the bed, already stocked with fiction, science textbooks, and Earth informational books.

While she was still staring at her new surroundings, she didn't notice Bruce standing behind her until he asked,

"It's nice right?" And she turned to face him, nodding with her mouth still partly open and her hands on either side of her face, making him chuckle at her reaction.

"I figured if you're gonna be living here while I'm away, you'd want it to be a little more homely."

At that Ash's hands dropped down and she looked distressed before he continued with his explanation,

"I'm only gonna be gone for maybe a month or two, there's still a lot of people who need help in other places around the world."

"Then, I'll come with you." Ash spoke with some level of desperation in her voice at the thought of being left behind.

Bruce kneeled down and put his hands on Ash's shoulders to make her look at him before he started,

"I need you to stay here, where it's safe and you'll be able to hone your powers so maybe one day you'll be able to come with us."

Ash looked down with her eyes closed before nodding to show she understood. With a jump before he could stand back up, she threw her arms around Bruce's neck and he hugged her back, the soft sounds of her crying sounding through her sleeves.

As soon as they broke apart, Tony showed up with Pepper by his side as he informed Bruce that his ride was ready to go.

Picking up the mid-sized suitcase Tony brought in, Bruce gave Ash one last side hug before walking out, stopping one last time at the doorway to tap the side of his head with one finger twice before smiling and leaving with Tony while Pepper stayed with Ash.

"What did that mean?" Pepper questioned repeating the motion.

"It's his way of saying for me to 'always use my head'." Ash smiled before setting herself and her backpack on the bed. Pepper sat next to her asking,

"So do you like it?" Pepper gestured to the room.

"I love it, how did you know…?"

"Tony figured orange and red would be your color, Dr. Banner told us you love working and reading, and I figured that you'd want to catch up on some Earth stuff."

"Thank you." Ash gave Pepper a hug and she gently patted Ash's back before standing up and saying,

"Well you can get fully settled in and Tony will be waiting for you in the new training room to start your power practice." Pepper gave a small wave before closing the door to the room, leaving Ash by herself.

She looked around the room one last time before pulling the clothes, an extra pair of shoes, and her suit out of the backpack Nat gave her. She held the suit in her hands realizing that it had been cleaned and there was no sign of the dirt, rubble, and blood, both Chitauri and human, on it anymore, but it still meant something to her; that she could use her powers for good, if she learned to use them properly.

After pulling the suit on and lacing up the boots that went with them, Ash opened up her pendant and laid it on the desk before whispering,

"I'm OK now…" And walking out of the room, turning off the light and closing the door behind her to start her new life.

AN- Sorry it's been a while since I've updated, but school has been a real killer to both my free time and to my creativity. I am still trying my absolute best to update chapters when I can, but I'm also working on a separate project that I hope to reveal soon once I finalize some drafts. See y'all in the next movie and in-between story, which I hope to post soon.


	16. A Fun Day Out

_Takes Place During Iron Man 3_

3rd Person POV in Avengers Tower

In her newly decorated room, Ash was sitting at her desk, tapping her pencil against her notebook, hitting a roadblock in her "homework" that Tony gave her to test out how much she knew about Earth math.

Bruce had been called away on another science consulting assignment, leaving Ash in the Stark Tower by herself with JARVIS looking after her, keeping her occupied with training simulations and Earth homework.

Groaning in frustration, she hit her forehead on the wooden surface of her desk and she heard a voice say,

"You doin' alright?" When she looked up to see that Natasha was leaning against the doorway to Ash's room.

"I thought you were on a mission." Ash brightened up as Nat came over and gave her a hug.

"I was, but I wrapped it up pretty quickly."

"Your solo missions are always finished quickly."

"Yeah, well this one more quick than others for reasons you don't want to know."

"Ok."

"So, what do you want to do?"

"What do you mean?"

"Come on, you've had the Tower all to yourself and now I'm back, so we should do something fun."

"Like what?"

This made Nat smile as she thought of something she thought the kid might like.

_Short Time Skip_

"What is this place?" Ash questioned as she looked at the scene in front of her; small humans were running around laughing and screaming on strange-looking structures, bigger ones with larger people were zipping around at a fast pace, and everywhere people were eating unusual things.

"Welcome to Coney Island." Nat gestured around them as no one recognized the two of them in their disguises; normal clothes and hats over their heads to conceal their bright red hair.

"Is this place some sort of training facility, because that is what I'm supposed to be doing; training."

"You've been training much more than the average 12-year-old, I'd say you should learn to have fun every once in a while."

"That does not sound like something you would normally say." Ash squinted up at Nat in confusion.

"You tell any of the others I said that and you're gonna have to go one on one with me for 'training'..." Nat stated dangerously low.

"Now _that_ sounds like the Nat I know."

"Come on, look we'll hang around here for one hour, if you don't like it then we'll head back to the Tower, deal?"

"Deal." Ash and Nat shook hands to make it "official" before Ash asked,

"So what do we do first?"

"Let me think…" An idea sparked in her mind and she grinned before saying,

"I think I know just the thing."

_Another Short Time Skip_

"So I just strap this on and then pull this down?" Ash did so on the ride that Nat had chosen; one where there were two people on each side of a tall rectangular pillar that seemed to go up pretty high.

"Yep and hold on." Nat told her from beside her as the ride was started up.

"Why?" Ash asked nervously as their seats started moving slowly toward the top of the pillar.

"You'll see." Their seats stopped at the top and Ash looked around in confusion,

"Are we supposed to be enjoying the view or-" She was cut off as their seat went sliding down at a fast pace, hair blowing upward Nat 'woohoo' ed while Ash just screamed with the other people that were strapped in. Their seats went up and down several more times before the ride finished and the other people got off while Ash was stuck in one place with her head bowed down and her hair shadowing her face.

"Hey you OK?" Nat asked, a bit concerned she may have introduced something new too fast for the girl before Ash's face lifted up and broke out in a wide grin as she started laughing.

"That was so much fun!" Ash bounced up from her seat with a renewed energy that she didn't have before.

"Yeah?" Nat grinned to see that she was doing alright before taking her hand and leading her off the ride as other people were starting to get on.

"Now that you know what you're getting into, what do you want to do next?"

"Ummmm…" Ash looked around in thought before her eyes fell on a small stand that was giving out big puffs of colorful fluff, "I want to try that."

"Cotton Candy it is." They went over to the stand where Nat paid for one big blossom of blue cotton candy.

"Here you go." Nat handed Ash her treat and she pulled some off and popped it in her mouth.

"Mmmm…" Ash loved the way it tasted and how it dissolved right in her mouth so she kept pulling more off as they walked around the games aisle.

"What should we do next?" Ash asked as she tossed the paper cone into the trash can after accidentally taking a bite out of it and finding out that it wasn't edible.

"How 'bout that?" Nat pointed to a game where there were a bunch of bottles filling a small space while people around were tossing rings onto them.

"How do you play this?"

"You have to try to get the rings onto the bottles and if you get a red bottle, you win a big prize." Nat explained as she pointed out how someone managed to land a red bottle and the booth manager whose name tag read "Terry" handed them a giant stuffed frog.

"But the circumference of the ring is smaller than the bottles themselves."

"Don't overthink it, just have fun trying."

"I'm starting to wonder if you're the real Natasha…"

"One on one…"

"Ok." Ash was given five rings for the five dollars that Nat handed over. She missed the first three times but managed to land two regular bottles.

"You get a Medium prize." Terry announced pointing to a row of stuffed animals that were between the large and small ones.

"I'll take…" Ash put her finger to her mouth in thought before she made her decision, "The Oryctolagus cuniculus."

"Uh the bunny?" Terry pulled down one of the medium-sized brown bunnies with large floppy ears, big brown eyes, and a red ribbon around its neck tied in a bow.

"Yes, please." Ash answered somewhat awkwardly.

"And we'll be going now." Nat hurried her away from the booth as Terry was starting to observe them more closely.

"Ok, most kids here don't use the scientific names of animals, and we're trying to keep a low profile while doing this remember?"

"I'll try to be more careful…" Ash admitted with some shame in her voice before Nat patted her back and told her,

"Look on the bright side, you just won your first Earth carnival toy. What're you gonna name it?"

"Name it?"

"Yeah, you can't seriously be thinking of calling it the 'Oryctolagus cuniculus'."

"Well, maybe I could call it… Hops?"

"That's cute."

"Now what?"

"Well, it's starting to get dark so we'll try one more thing and then well head home, good?"

"Yes."

"How about that?" Nat pointed to the dunk tank that was in the corner of the fair as two employees were switching shifts.

"What is the objective?" Ash questioned as Nat went up to the carny and purchased three shots for each of them.

"You have to try to hit that target with these to make him fall into the water." Nat explained holding the ball up and demonstrating, but doing it sloppily so she wouldn't draw any unwanted attention to the two of them.

"I see, the objective is to humiliate the person in the cage as a method of amusement." Ash innocently stated and Nat gave her a thumbs-up while clicking her mouth in agreement before she made her last two shots, missing both times on purpose.

"Very well." Ash stepped forward and tossed one, it narrowly missed the target.

"Come on, is that all you got Buttercup!?" The man in the tank taunted, making Ash the slightest bit annoyed as she tried her second shot and it hit the target, but not hard enough to activate it.

"This kid's got nothing!" That one word made Ash snap: thinking about all that she had lost and now some human who didn't even know her was ridiculing her pain. As she wound up for her last shot, her powers went out of control and lit the ball on fire before she tossed right in the middle of the target and bended forward enough to pitch her hat off. The target activated and dunked the man into the water, but it was also hit with enough heat to melt it as Ash uprighted herself with her bright red and copper hair uncovered.

"What did you do?" Nat whispered as she looked around them to see people gazing at them and some pointed at Ash recognizing her from the way they shouted,

"It's the Ion Phoenix!"

"You mean the fiery hazard?"

"No, I mean the hero."

People started to argue while others started to advance toward her, paying no attention to Nat.

"Alright we gotta move kid." Nat grabbed Ash's hand, making her drop Hops, as they began to run toward the exit, some of Ash's haters shouting after her while her fans stopped them from pursuing the two of them.

Once they made it out of the park, they slowed down to let Ash sit on the street curb to catch her breath as Nat surveyed the area to see what the best way to get back to the Tower was.

"If we take the street just past..." Nat was devising the route out loud for no one to hear, but Ash heard and she looked down with guilt written all over her face before breaking the silence with,

"I apologize for losing control of my emotions and endangering our safety..."

"Hey, it's not your fault OK, I should have known to better prepare you for people who can be a little..."

"Insufferable?" Ash supplied helpfully.

"Yeah..."

"I should not have overreacted, that man did not know about everything I have lost, to say that I had 'nothing', and I do... have nothing that is..."

"You may have had nothing when you first came to this planet, but now you have Bruce, the team, me… and Hops." Nat pulled the stuffed bunny out from behind her and Ash smiled before taking Hops and burying her face in its soft fur.

"You know, human kids your age have given up their toys by now?"

"But I'm not a _human_ kid, therefore it does not apply to me." Ash smiled mischievously before Nat lightly smirked before ruffling her hair and pulling her up so they could head back. When they got to the Tower, JARVIS informed Ash that Bruce would return tomorrow along with Tony and she went to sleep, content to know they were safe.

_Short Time Skip_

The next day, Ash slept in from all the excitement at the park and when she came out, still wearing her pajamas and clutching Hops, she saw that Bruce and Tony were in the living room, but Bruce was sleeping on the couch next to where Tony was talking with his eyes closed,

"You know and thank you by the way for listening. It's something about gettin' it off my chest and putting it out there in the atmosphere instead of holding this in. I mean this is what gets people sick you know. Wow I had no idea you were such a good listener. To be able to share my intimate thoughts and experiences with someone it just cuts the weight of it in half. It's like a snake swallowing its own tail, everything comes full circle. And the fact that you've been able to help me process-" Tony stopped when he saw Bruce waking up after he had dropped his glasses.

"Sorry what?"

"You with me?"

"I was yeah we were at-"

"You were actively napping?"

"I wa drifted"

"Where did I lose you?"

There was a pause as Bruce thought before answering,

"Elevator in Switzerland"

"So you heard none of it."

"I'm sorry, I'm not that kind of doctor, I'm not a therapist. It's not my training I don't have the-"

"What the time?"

"Temperament."

"I don't think that is required to listen to someone." Ash spoke up, bringing their attention to her as she went to give each of them a hug before going to sit on the couch opposite from Bruce and next to Tony.

"Where have you been?" Tony pointed to Hops with a questioning look.

"Coney Island, where have you both been?" Ash asked pluckily, making them both smile before Tony started his story all over again, this time with Bruce and Ash listening.


	17. Old Friends?

_Takes Place in Winter Soldier_

Ash's POV

It was the middle of the night and I was sitting at my desk carving another wooden statue of a cat, wearing a t-shirt, dark blue jeans, red sneakers, and a dark blue flannel sweater tied around my waist when I asked,

"JARVIS?"

"Yes Ms. Ash?"

"Can you turn on the tv and put on the news please?"

"I would not recommend that at this moment."

"Why not?"

"I'm afraid it would upset you."

"JARVIS, I can handle whatever nonsense the news has to offer." I assured him as I put the finished statue down and started cleaning up the wood shavings from the desk top.

"Very well..." The tv turned on and instantly the line of text on the red Breaking News bar caught my attention, "Captain America; Public Enemy Number One."

"What?!" I bolted up from my seat and turned the volume up, listening as the news described how Steve Rogers was involved in the death of Nick Fury, fled from S.H.I.E.L.D., and has not been heard from since.

"This can't be…" I put a hand to my mouth in disbelief when a beeping alert broke my attention away from the screen.

"There is someone who wishes to see you in the labs." JARVIS informed me and I asked,

"Who?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. authorities." I left my room walking rapidly and was met with four armored soldiers with a man leading them in the lab area.

"What's going on?" I demanded to know and the lead man asked,

"Are you Ash?"

"Yes, and, with all due respect, you didn't answer my question." I did my best to maintain a composed appearance but my hands started to heat up anyway.

"My name is Brent Hallaway and we believe you are in danger. I've been sent by Alexander Pierce, the Secretary of the World Security Council, to bring you to S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in Washington D.C. immediately."

"I'm not sure about this..." I told him warily, slowly backing away from them.

"Please, we don't want to have to bring you to him by force, but we have been authorized to do so if you don't come quietly."

"True words of an authoritarian..." I quietly pulled the phone that Tony gave me before he left in case I needed to contact him or the others out of my back pocket and was about to hit the extra panic button he had installed on it, when I felt it being taken out of my grasp forcefully before my arms were grabbed and held behind my back.

"We didn't want to have to do it this way, but the hard way it is." Hallaway gave a signal to the man holding me and I was forcefully moved along until I shouted,

"JARVIS, activate Protocol 3 7 9!"

"Protoco activated." All the tower lights went out and my natural night vision activated, surprising the men long enough for me to wrench my arms out of their grip and fire several blasts of flames to keep them away.

"Protocol Override Accepted." JARVIS's systems were hacked to where the light came back on and I no longer had the element of surprise in the dark.

"Oh boy..." I looked at the men as they pulled their weapons out and red lasers were aimed right at my core.

"Now how 'bout you come quietly and not give us any trouble this time, hmm?" Hallaway asked with a condescending tone of voice.

"No!" I fired a blast up at the wall to ceiling window, breaking it and giving me an opening to escape by flying out into the open outside.

"Take her down!" I heard Hallaway shout from the building and, before I knew what was happening, a small streak of silver zipped past me in the air and exploded in a cloud of green fumes.

"Agh!" I had no time to attempt to hold my breath before my vision started to go hazy and I crashed back down to the ground before blacking out completely.

3rd Person POV

_2 Hours Later_

Hallaway and his extraction team had successfully handcuffed Ash with special ionized radiation cuffs that would fully dampen her powers as well as her radiation signature before they arrived at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters by helicopter. They were disembarking and didn't notice that she was waking up, but keeping her eyes closed to fake being unconscious as she had been taught by Nat in case of a kidnapping.

"The package has been retrieved and we're bringing it in now." Hallaway reported into his commlink as they walked toward the building when Ash flipped the man holding her over her head and used the chain between her cuffs to twist a weapon out of another soldier's hands before stealing a grenade off someone's belt and pulling the pin with her teeth before tossing it to the ground.

"Grenade!" The blast went off, causing everyone to duck down to avoid the blast, giving Ash another opening to run off through the streets of the city.

"Grr..." Hallaway got up and frustratingly pulled the comm out before reporting, "Package is on the move. Permission to pursue?"

"Leave it. The serum will stay in her system for the next 24 hours, she's helpless, we'll catch her soon enough." Pierce's voice came through and Hallaway grudgingly complied with the order.

Meanwhile, Ash had run as far away as she could and made it to the waterfront of Washington Monument before she finally slowed down to catch her breath.

"Need… to… get these off..." Ash tried to heat up her hands to melt through the metal, but she realized that the glowing cuffs were emitting ionizing radiation and, as an extra safeguard, the toxin she had inhaled earlier was severely weakening her.

Frustrated, Ash decided to sit against a tree, surprised at her exhaustion, to figure out what she was going to do since she ran away from obviously corrupt authoritarian figures for S.H.I.E.L.D., so either they had gone rogue or S.H.I.E.L.D. itself was compromised as she deduced in her mind before dozing off.

Little did she know, someone was running her way, but it wasn't a S.H.I.E.L.D. operative, it was a man who was out for his early morning jog, not really enjoying the fact he wasn't hearing "On your left" every few minutes due to everything that was going on.

"Huh?" He stopped jogging when he saw bright red hair peeking out from behind some bushes and, after he got closer, he saw that it was a kid sleeping against a tree; a kid wearing glowing handcuffs, and was covered in smoke and rubble and countless dried up scratches, but he recognized her as the Ion Phoenix from the Battle of New York.

"Hey, kid?" He gently shook her and she immediately bolted up and held up her cuffed hands in a defensive position.

"Get away from me!"

"Woah hey hold on!" The man held up his hands non-threateningly as Ash questioned,

"Are you S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"What? No." He kneeled down to make eye contact before introducing himself, "My name's Sam, Sam Wilson. I'm a friend of Steve."

"Steve Rogers?" Ash asked, still mistrustful of this "Sam Wilson."

"Yeah yeah, Captain America." He smiled a little, proud of that little fact when they both heard a helicopter overhead heading their way.

"Come on, it's not safe out here." He helped her off the ground, albeit with her still slightly glaring in suspicion at him, and they both made their way over to his house just as the sun was rising.

As soon as they made it to Sam's house, he closed and locked the door behind them and went to find something to pick the lock on the cuffs.

Ash was wandering around Sam's house, trying to determine if she could trust this man when she saw a photo of him standing side by side in front of an official looking building with another man and they were both wearing uniforms, but were smiling.

"That's me and Riley." She turned around to see Sam standing next to her with a Philip's head screwdriver in his hand, "He was apart of my team until he was killed during a mission."

"He was a friend?" Ash asked as they both made their way to the kitchen table where she rested her cuffed hands on the surface and Sam tried to jam the screwdriver into the keyhole.

"My wingman." He answered, but Ash looked at him in confusion so he added, "A fellow pilot." and she nodded in understanding as he continued to jiggle the screwdriver in the hole.

"What were you doing out there?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers came to the Tower and abducted me after I refused to come willingly."

"Heh abduct…" He laughed a bit to himself before seeing Ash's dead serious face and coughed before asking, "Something didn't seem right?"

"Yes. The gas they used to incapacitate me is still affecting me, I can barely make my hands warm, let alone light any flames." Ash looked down to her cuffed hands right before the arms sprung open, freeing her hands.

"Haha!" Sam raised his arms in triumph as Ash rubbed the red marks on her wrists before he asked, "Would you believe me if I said that was my first time picking a lock?"

"Yes." Ash answered simply.

"Ok..." Sam spoke a bit disappointed before shaking it off and pointing down the hall and saying, "Bathroom's on the left if you want to go clean up and wrap those up."

"Thank you." Ash went to said room and took a washcloth to wash her face clean of the smoke that had left streaks across her face. She fingered some of the small scratches that she accidentally opened up while cleaning her face, thinking about how she had not hesitated to use that grenade, endangering herself and others just to give herself an opening to escape, it scared her to think about how much she had changed since New York, some for the better, some she had yet to decide.

Out of nowhere, she felt a dizzy spell hit her full force to where she leaned forward and had to clutch the edge of the sink with both hands to keep from falling down. Breathing deeply, she straightened back up and wiped the sweat drops from her forehead before shaking her head clear of the dizziness.

She had grabbed gauze off the rack and was wrapping both her wrists when she heard knocking on the front door and she stiffened a bit at the sound.

"Hey kid! We got company." She heard Sam call out a minute later and she slowly came out of the bathroom only to be met with a poorly disguised Steve and Natasha in the dining room, looking like they had just survived an explosion from the smoke and rubble on their ripped clothes.

"Steve! Nat!" Ash ran up to the two of them and grabbed them both in a hug.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Nat kneeled down to Ash's height, taking in the scratches on her face and gauze around her wrists.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. happened." Sam answered for her and they both turned their attention back to Ash who nodded with a grim expression on her face as confirmation.

A short while later, Nat and Steve had gone to clean themselves up while Ash helped Sam with making breakfast and they all ate before discussing their next plan of action.

"So, the question is, who at S.H.I.E.L.D. could launch a domestic missile strike?" Nat questioned out loud.

"Pierce." Steve answered.

"Who happens to be sitting on top of the most secure building in the world."

"But he's not working alone. Zola's algorithm was on the Lemurian Star."

"So was Jasper Sitwell."

"So, the real question is, how do the two most wanted people in Washington kidnap a S.H.I.E.L.D. officer in broad daylight?"

"The answer is, you don't." Sam came into the room and dropped a brown folder on the table.

"What's this?" Steve took the file and opened it to read it.

"Call it a resume."

"Is this Bakhmala? The Khalid Khandil mission, that was you? You didn't say he was a Pararescue." Nat questioned and Sam answered with a nod.

"Is this Riley?" Steve asked.

"Yeah..."

"I heard they couldn't bring in the choppers because of the RPGs. What did you use? A stealth chute?" Nat remembered.

"No. These." Sam held up the folder and it had EXO-7 FALCON on the front in bold black letters.

"I thought you said you were a pilot."

"I never said pilot." Sam smirked a bit.

"I can't ask you to do this, Sam. You got out for a good reason."

"Dude, Captain America needs my help. There's no better reason to get back in."

"Where can we get our hands on one of these things?"

"The last one is at Fort Meade. Behind three guarded gates and a 12-inch steel wall."

"Shouldn't be a problem." Steve dropped the file back on the table and they all prepared to leave before Ash spoke up from where she was standing in the kitchen,

"I can't help with this mission..."

"What?"

"Why not?" Nat asked, concerned.

"Whatever they used on me, it's weakening me far more than just usage of my powers. I'm surprised I'm still standing right now." She answered with a weak voice.

"It's alright, you need to lay low anyway, I'm willing to bet they have search parties out there lookin' for you." Steve assured her.

"She can stay here. Nobody ever comes around here, it'll be safe for her to hide." Sam offered just before Ash leaned forward a bit, clutching her stomach and moaning in pain.

"Hey hey..." Nat came over and led her to the couch in the living room, "It's OK, just rest for now, we'll be back soon..." Nat laid Ash back on the couch as she was screwing her eyes shut in pain.

"Whatever they used on her, it should pass, but she's not gonna be in a good position to fight." Sam explained.

"You know what this is?" Nat questioned after draping a blanket over Ash.

"I think I have a pretty good idea from what she told me; Serum DH75Z, an experimental sedative created by S.H.I.E.L.D. to severely weaken the victim's ability to move, it was never released because it's supposed to be pretty deadly for a human due to a defect in the chemical composition, but since she's not human..."

"She'll be OK?" Steve finished.

"Hopefully."

"We gotta move, the longer we stay in one place, the easier they could catch up." Steve brought their attention back to the issue at hand, mainly directed to Nat as she was brushing stray strands of hair away from Ash's face as she was slowly falling unconscious.

"We'll be back OK..." Nat whispered to Ash and she feverishly nodded before fully closing her eyes.

"Let's go." Nat stated determinedly before walking out the door with Steve and Sam following behind her.

_Long Time Skip_

A couple hours later, some large tremors woke Ash up from where she was still laying on the couch. Groggily opening her eyes, she saw that everyone was still gone and she was alone. After getting up she still felt sick to her stomach, but was at least able to move around a little better without feeling stinging pain in her muscles.

"Once again, not being human pays off..." Ash commented to herself as she got up to find something to do. Her eyes fell to the remote that lay on the living room table and the tv in front of her.

_Should I even...? _She thought to herself in hesitation before resolving to pick up the remote and turning on the tv. Once again, she was met with a Breaking New report of three Helicarriers being launched from the river near S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters and reports of Captain America.

"Oh no..." Ash turned off the tv and had an inner debate on whether she should stay put where she would be safe, or risk it and go to help Steve, Sam, and Nat. Ash held up her hand and tried to summon some flames, only succeeding in making her hand glow in heat a little bit.

"Good enough." She told herself before tightening the laces on her sneakers and the flannel around her waist and leaving through the back patio door, running toward the fight.

_Short Running Time Skip_

After about ten minutes of running, and occasional short flying leaps, later, Ash made it to the forest lining the river near HQ and was panting while watching as the Helicarriers started shooting at each other. Squinting up at one of the Helicarriers, Ash thought she saw a blur of blue and red fighting someone with silver where their arm should have been.

"How do I get up there?" Ash questioned to herself before she felt someone tackle her from the side and pinned her to the wet ground. When she got her bearings back together, she saw that she was looking up into familiar red and orange eyes with wild and unruly matching hair wearing a black uniform.

...

...

"Xavion...?" She recognized the boy in front of her but he didn't seem to as he prepared to blast her, making her bring her legs up to kick him off from under. When he got up, she saw that his eyes were burning like molten lava and was twitching spastically and was growling like a wild animal.

"Xay! It's me, Lumna!" Ash tried to plead with him, but her gaze caught sight of a metallic collar that was around his neck with the red Hydra symbol on it and noted some high pitched noises coming from it.

"Some kind of mental frequency tech." Ash analyzed its design in her mind just before Xavion charged at her again, this time, she ducked down and flipped upright as Xavion landed on her and was tossed to the ground.

"I need to get that collar off..." Ash clenched her fists as the boy got up and glared at her with a crazed look in his eyes.

"I'm sorry about this Xay!" Ash ran forward and was about to leap onto his shoulders to perform the move Nat showed her to do to literally bring an enemy to the ground, but Xavion shot a blast of fire at her before she could prepare to execute the move. She was knocked to the side and lay there for a few seconds before she noticed that Xavion was stalking toward her with a blazing fist ready to fire.

"It's me Xay… Please… Don't..." She pleaded once more to convince her friend to not do what he was about to do, but this time it seemed to work as his fist shuddered in midair, as though he was fighting with himself. Abruptly, a high-pitched piercing screech sounded from his collar and he clenched his head in pain before taking to the sky, flying off to who knows where.

Sighing in relief that she didn't have to fight her friend anymore, but still discouraged that he was under the influence of Hydra, Ash was prepared to leave the area when she heard sloshing water noises coming from the river a few feet away. Slipping on the muddy edge, Ash navigated her way towards the sounds and from a few feet away, she could see the man with the metal arm, dragging something behind him in the river, or rather someone, Steve. Once she got close enough, she saw that she recognized the man, from the stories Steve told her, who was dragging an injury-ridden Steve, his old childhood friend, Bucky Barnes.

Bucky saw her coming and shot her a warning glare that told her not to follow him before he dropped Steve on the ground out of the river and left, leaving Ash to run over to Steve and check on him with what medical knowledge she had to make sure he was still alive.

_Another Time Skip_

Later, after Steve had been taken to the hospital, Nat came to take Ash to the aircraft hangar to send her back to the Tower when she stopped her and pulled her aside.

"Hey kid… one of Hydra's agents..."

"Was Xavion…" Ash finished her sentence seeing as how hesitant she was to finish it herself.

"Yeah? How'd you?"

"He and I fought for a little bit before I found Steve by the river… he… wasn't himself... Hydra's controlling him..."

"We'll find a way to free him, I promise..." Nat pulled her into a much-needed hug, before facing her to say,

"We don't tell Bruce about this OK?"

"Why not?"

"The world already has a situation of questioning its security and about wanting to arrest you, me, and the others, we shouldn't add to the list of things to stress him out with."

"Ok." Ash gave Nat one last hug before she was called to board the airplane bound for New York.

Reflecting on her entire day, Ash soon fell asleep, still thinking about how much hope she felt when she saw her old friend for the first time, along with doubt replacing it when she saw that he was under HYDRA's control, before a sudden thought hit her,

_There must be others..._

AN- Sorry it's been a while, a month to be exact, since I've updated either of my Marvel OC Insert stories, but I'm still working on Vol. 2 and Age of Ultron chapters and haven't been able to lately because of homework and lack of access to the laptop.

I have one more filler chapter for this story that I hope to post later this week and I will try my absolute hardest to get the first chapters of the next movies finished before next week.

Also, I've been doing some more work on my OC File book over on my Wattpad account and will be posting the first chapters of the OC Short Stories and Mini Moments book soon.

I hope you all are doing well during this time and I'm always available to talk, especially to fellow Class of 2020 Seniors since we're all in the same boat of uncertainty right now...

See y'all in the next chapter!


	18. Others?

AN- Here's the last filler chapter before Age of Ultron which I will post the first chapter of soon and will, hopefully, be able to work on the rest over the summer more often. In this chapter, there will be a little more insight into the Chrysinthean species. I hope you all enjoy it ^^

_After Winter Soldier but Before Age of Ultron_

Somewhere in Oregon

Ash's POV

"Why are we out here?" I questioned looking at the variety of structures that human children were running around, climbing on oddly shaped structures, and doing… whatever it was that human children do. Despite being on Earth for a few years already, I still found some of their ways strange and confusing to understand.

"Because, you're still a kid, and kids shouldn't be cooped up inside a lab all the time, or on spontaneous life-threatening missions, you need some time outside to enjoy yourself." Bruce explained to her, shooting a bit of a pointed look at "life threatening missions", filling me with guilt since I had caved about the events during Project Insight in D.C. when he asked where I had been after arriving back at the Tower, against Nat's wishes.

"I'm already going to hear from Nat about telling you, do you really need to add to the punishment?" I questioned sulkily.

"Yes." Bruce replied as he pulled his cap down further over his face as a couple pushing their baby along in a stroller passed the two of them.

"I'm already enduring enough punishment with having to wear this mask." I grumbled a bit as I pulled at the thin photostatic veil that was concealing my face to make me look more human, but felt incredibly uncomfortable against my skin.

"Well it was either that or liquid concealer and even I think that's too much of a punishment."

"So what do I do?" I walked up to a structure where small, rubber, rectangle seats on the ends of chains rested on a frame of metal.

"You sit down and swing."

"Ok…" I sat down on the seat and leaned back, expecting there to be a backing, but instead, I fell backward hitting the ground full force.

"Ow…" I sat up rubbing my back before Bruce helped me up by my arm.

"No no you need to hold on to the chains and swing." Bruce motioned to another human child "swinging" by kicking their legs forward and backward to create the swinging momentum.

"Very well…" I got back onto the seat, holding onto the chains with a vise grip before attempting to kick my legs in a similar fashion to the child on my right, only resulting in slight rocking in place rather than full force swinging. Groaning in frustration, I hung my head and asked,

"I'm not doing this correctly, am I?"

"No, but you know you could just ask for help, right?" Bruce smiled as he stepped forward and pushed my back, making me swing forward.

"Now kick your legs back." He instructed and I did so, pushing myself back.

"Now kick forward." I did so again, going even higher this time.

"Alright you got it." I looked back to see Bruce grinning and clapping lightly as I continued the motions, enjoying the slight breeze ruffling my hair and my vision being filled with the sky with each forward motion.

Just as I felt myself begin to smile, a harsh ***Boom*** sounded from afar and I snapped my head forward to see a plume of smoke rising in the distance and people running away with their children screaming.

"Oh no…" I pulled myself to a stand on the swing and leaped forward when it went forward, doing a front flip before landing in a crouch like Natasha had taught me before running forward.

"Ash wait!" I didn't stop after Bruce called out to me as I continued to run toward the source of the explosion, pulling off the veil in a swift motion.

When I got there, I saw a being standing next to the smoking crater with an advanced, and strangely familiar, looking piece of technology on his wrist.

"What are you doing with that?" I demanded and he looked up at me before smiling in a deranged manner and saying,

"There you are... _Chrysinthean_." I froze in place, paralyzed by how he knew what I was before raising the weapon up and firing a light blue projectile right at my core, too quickly for me to dodge.

A fiery feeling spread through my body as I felt myself flying back before my vision dotted with spots and all went dark.

3rd Person POV

Just as Ash was thrown back, the attacker grabbed a communications device from his pocket and reported in,

"This is Skodor. Target subdued, bringing it in now."

However, just before he could go over to retrieve Ash, a figure wearing storage looking clothes that consisted of a patterned jacket with a wide belt and pants with flared out legs with a curled mass of brown hair appeared and cut in between the two of them.

"You will come no closer!" The figure raised a hand forward sending out a wave of yellow light that sent the assailant flying back before landing in a low crouch on the ground before they started clashing.

Meanwhile, Bruce managed to make it to where Ash lay in the charred grass and checked her pulse, relieved when he found one, albeit extremely weak before looking over to see her pendent laying on the ground a few feet away.

"Alright let's go." Bruce was struggling a bit picking her up when the figure from before appeared over the hill again, running toward them.

"Stay back!" Bruce held a hand out which twitched in and out of a fist as he was struggling to keep his anger and fear under control.

"You need not fear me Dr. Banner." The figure assured him as he came closer to the two of them with their hands up in a non-threatening position until he was kneeling right in front of them.

"How do you know who I am?"

"As you humans would say, I keep 'tabs' on others of my people. I am Zaruk and we must leave now before that Oajin comes to." Zaruk hoisted Ash up carrying her with one arm supporting her back and the other her legs as she lay unconscious.

"Hurry." Zaruk motioned with their head to come with them.

"Where are we going?" Bruce asked as he quickly scooped up the pendant from the ground and pocketed it.

"To the Haven." Zaruk answered simply as they ran toward the forest.

_Short Running Time Skip_

"How much further is this 'Haven'?" Bruce asked, out of breath from running.

"We are here." Zaruk stopped in front of a pile of rocks before passing right through them, revealing it to be a hologram.

"Ok just when I thought this couldn't get any freakier…" Bruce passed through the barrier and stepped in to reveal a giant cave and the most amazing secret alien society he had ever seen.

Light came in through a single hole in the roof, crevices in the walls held possessions, light dotted vines with strange-looking flower blossoms expelling glowing seeds that floated through the air like dandelion seeds grew along the walls in a curlicue fashion, lighting up the space with a dim glow. As he looked around more, Bruce saw a few Chrysintheans, adults and adolescents, who were walking around, pausing in their activities to see their visitors.

"Uh hi." Bruce awkwardly held up a hand in greeting.

"Zaruk, what are you thinking, bringing in an outsider?" One Chrysinthean with dark electric blue hair and light gray skin wearing clothing similar to Zaruk's demanded,

"Calm yourself Waio, he is a Jaodev." Zaruk answered and immediately the other Chrysinthean's face displayed shock and he bowed to one knee with a fist over his chest.

"I'm a what now?" Bruce questioned unsure of this new development.

"A Jaodev, or in your language a 'protector', you have been watching over this young one, haven't you?"

"Y-yeah I mean-"

"Then you know of our species and have sworn to keep our species a secret. It is a quality in humans we have had yet to see and therefore are grateful to you for accepting one of our own and keeping our secret."

"It's not really my place to tell…"

"We know, it is hers, but once she awakens we will need to establish the importance of our people's secrecy." Zaruk walked over to a large flat-topped boulder that was set in the center of the cave and lay Ash on top of it.

"What has happened to this one?" Another Chrysinthean with long emerald-colored hair done in a long plait down her back and with light cerise skin came up and placed a hand on Ash's forehead.

"It's bad, she got hit right in her…" Bruce made a circling motion with his hand to her core.

"Then we must perform a Galaia right away." She urged before every Chrysinthean within the room gathered around in a circle with Ash in the middle.

"Wait wait wait, what's happening?" Bruce held his hands up in question before a child with light purple hair and light blue skin wearing a dress with a high necked collar came up to him and pulled him away from the circle to get a better vantage point on a ledge that overlooked the area.

"What's-?" Bruce was cut off by the child putting a finger to her mouth in a silencing motion before placing both of her hands over her core and making a spreading motion and then a focusing motion.

"They're going to share their core energy with her?" Bruce deduced from the game of charades and the girl nodded slowly before pointing to show him how everyone in the circle had joined hands grasping wrists and a stream of light passed through all of them before a ray of light from each person contributed to a single sphere of light that bathed Ash in a brilliant glow.

"Woah… does this only work among your people or can it be used on others?"

The girl made some more hand motions but they were all but lost on Bruce as he tilted his head before turning his attention back to the healing circle. The sphere of light dissipated back into the circle members and Ash bolted upright in a silent gasp as Zaruk placed a hand on her shoulder and spoke softly before helping her off the platform and leading her to a separate room.

"What do I do now?" Bruce asked the girl and she just shrugged before picking a wicker basket up from the natural shelf in the cave wall and leaving.

"Nice chatting with you too…" Bruce "told" the girl as he sat down before the defensive Chrysinthean from before, Waio if he remembered correctly, came up to him and held out his hand.

"I apologize for speaking out of line when you first arrived, Dr. Banner."

"No... problem?" Bruce accepted the handshake, albeit he did it a little stiffly.

"I have seen this motion being used to 'extend an olive branch' among you humans, but I am afraid I am not practiced in it."

"I-it's alright, neither was Ash the first time." Bruce was quick to assure him as he made a motion to follow him and they started to walk through the society's hideout, the girl from before stopping in front of them to gather some of the flowers that grew along the wall and deposit them into the basket she was carrying, pausing her chore to wave to Bruce, who awkwardly waved back before she left.

"I saw Reaia attempting to communicate with you during the Galaia, so I assumed you would have liked a verbal explanation of what exactly we are."

"Can she not talk or…?"

"She lost her voice when she ventured too far onto a human's 'farm' and sustained a critical injury to her throat. We were able to save her life, but unfortunately her voice was lost."

"I thought that Ga-lee-uh could heal?"

"We may be an advanced species, but even we have not evolved to where we can fully regenerate lost internal organs or appendages. Unfortunately for those of us who get too close to overly wary humans on occasion..." Waio gestured to another Chrysinthean who was missing his right leg and was walking using crutches that looked to be made out of branches with a basket strapped to his back.

A closer look at a couple more of the hideout's inhabitants revealed that quite a few individuals were missing appendages, but seemed to have adapted to it.

"Is everyone here the only ones on Earth?" Bruce asked worriedly.

"No, we have heard from other small clans, very few of them, but they are here nonetheless. We are the fortunate ones, not everyone managed to escape our planet's destruction..." Waio trailed off before stopping as some kids ran in front of them, laughing happily as they chased each other down a hall before Waio smiled slightly and added, "But those of us who remain are in good spirits, it is the only thing keeping us alive."

"I wish I could say the same for Ash err Lumna I should say. She's… lost everything… her mom... her sister… her best friend… and she still can't even remember her family's names..." Bruce pulled out the pendant and opened it up to reveal the pictures inside.

"'Lumna'? As in the Viwa clan?" Waio held out his hand for the pendant and Bruce gave it to him to look at.

"'Viwa'?"

"It is what you would call a 'surname'."

"Oh."

"Yes, her mother was Lorinia and her sister was Astra." Waio pointed to the other two people in the family portrait as he said their names.

"Where's their dad?"

"There was no father, Lorinia was one of the few who chose to parent children on her own."

"How does that even work? Here-"

"We are well aware of how you humans reproduce and I must say it is… disturbing to say the least…" Waio cut Bruce off before shuddering a bit and explained, "On our planet, when one wished to have children, they simply needed to ask the Orinix, and to show their commitment to parenthood, they were required to stay in the Caverns of Consultation for four days without any sustenance. After showing their dedication, a child is created from a single spark of the Orinix's being."

"That's… fascinating. W-What about him…?" Bruce pointed to the boy in the other picture. Waio suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable as he closed the pendant and handed it back to Bruce abruptly.

"What's wrong?"

"That boy… his name is Xavion..."

"Don't you mean 'was', Lumna says she remembers him getting killed to save her?" Bruce questioned in blatant confusion.

"No… he was saved… only to be lost again… my son..." Waio bowed his head down as his voice wavered saying the last part of his sentence.

"Woah… 'son' and what do you mean 'lost again'?" Waio looked at Bruce with sadness in his eyes before sitting and leaning against the cave wall as he started to explain,

"Yes he was killed… but the Orinix revived him after I pleaded with it and we managed to make it to an escape pod that was coordinated to Earth, even though he wanted to find Lumna so badly." Waio smiled a bit before continuing, "When we arrived, we immediately began to make a home for ourselves here in this clan until a sickness went around and we needed more Eocti seeds, so he volunteered to go into the city in order to connect to a signal in an attempt to contact other clans, he managed to send out the message, but he never returned…"

"I'm sorry..."

"I never should have let him do it… He wanted to prove, to the others and to me, that he was capable of helping our people as he did with his friend so long ago and it could have cost him his life… again..."

"Ash wants to regain her memories, but sometimes she fears what she will remember about her past like when she remembered about the Chitauri invasion, she barely got any sleep for weeks after that..." Bruce admits sadly.

"They both had the courage to bring about change, but we fear it would lead to their demise as it did my son…"

"Waio," He turned to look at Bruce as he continued, "What if I told you your son isn't dead?" Waio looked at him with hope in his eyes.

"Ash told me that she saw him after the whole… situation with Project Insight, he's alive, but he's under HYDRA's control."

"I have heard many things about that organization, none of them good."

"She thinks she can save him, bring him back from the 'dark place' as she calls it."

"'Dark place'?"

"I don't know she said the last time she saw him his eyes were glowing, acting aggressively, and was firing random blasts at anything in his path and Hydra was taking advantage of his unstable mindset with sound frequencies." Bruce explained and was met with Waio's relieved laughter.

"I don't…" He was cut off with Waio explaining,

"Forgive me, but the answer is simple; he is experiencing Tayen."

"What's Tayen?"

"It is a lot like you humans' 'puberty', once they reach the appropriate age for it, they begin to act irrationally, wild even, and once they reach peak, untamed behavior, all that needs to be done is to engulf them in their element to restore their rightful mindsets and gain their Marks. This was done in our homeworld with the Sanctuary Caves, special caves that contained all four of our planet's basic elements: earth, fire, water, and plasma."

"Plasma? You mean like electricity?"

"Yes, Lumna's sister, Astra, was a wielder of plasma, she was one of the very few with this ability."

"Have you heard from her?"

"I'm afraid I have not, we have not yet reached communication with clans on other planets, most of our technology was destroyed along with our planet and your Earth technology is severely limited in terms of contact range."

"Sorry?"

"It is fine, in time we hope to reach others and come together to find a new home, as we helped the Skrulls do so long ago."

"Skrulls?"

"That is a story for another time, I believe Zaruk is almost down discussing our clan's discretion with Lumna." Waio stood up and Bruce followed suit.

"Well thank you for the... insight into your species." Bruce awkwardly extended his hand to Waio, who shook it more smoothly this time. Bruce turned to walk away when,

"Dr. Banner?"

"Hmm?" Bruce turned back around to face Waio as he spoke,

"I realize that, as a scientist, it is your job to make sense of things that do not make sense so that they would not be feared by your people, and our species may seem unfamiliar and perplexing, but we are not to be feared…"

"No no I get it, all your people want is to keep each other safe, and if that means hiding from our people because you think they wouldn't take news of aliens on our world too well, you do what you think's best for you all-"

"Bruce!" They both turned to see that Ash and Zaruk were right there and Ash ran forward to give Bruce a tight hug.

"-especially for the next generation." Bruce added as Ash released him from her hug, but he kept her by his side in a lighter hug.

"Once again, we are grateful for your compliance in keeping our society secret." Zaruk thanked them and they both nodded.

"You are both welcome back here anytime you would like." Waio offered them before they reached the secret entrance.

"Thank you and we will do whatever it takes to get your son back to you safely." Bruce promised him before he and Ash stepped through the barrier to reach the outside world, where it was dark and the lights of human civilization shone in the distance.

"You feeling better?" Bruce asked Ash as they maneuvered their way through the trees.

"Yep," Ash replied, smiling that she was speaking more normally, "I'm glad to know I'm not the only one on Earth."

"Yeah, that must be… great..."

"What's the matter, you don't seem too happy about it?" Ash questioned him in a curious tone.

"I am, it's just… how much longer do they think they can hide from people?"

"I'm not sure… I see valid points from both sides, there are still many people that can't handle the fact that me and Thor are aliens, so the knowledge that there are others not only on this planet but other galaxies would guarantee panic, but I feel that the longer they hide, the harder it will be for others to accept them if the truth ever gets out." Ash held her hands on the sides of her head as if she was trying to keep her thoughts inside, but was failing.

"Hey, let's not worry about it for now. Let's just get back home and figure out what to do from there, yeah?"

"Yeah." Ash nodded as they reached the edge of the forest that led back to town.

"Alright, now let's-" Bruce's sentence was interrupted when something glowing blue was shot to the ground next to them and they quickly turned around to see the same Oajin, Skodor, from before, but looking more beat up and his weapon was badly damaged.

"Stop right there!" Skodor huffed out as he got closer to them, Bruce doing his best to keep the Hulk in check but maintaining a firm stance in front of Ash.

"What do you want from me?" Ash demanded to know as she got in front of Bruce.

"Kryjer commands that you be brought to him immediately."

"Well you can tell Kryjer that I'm not going anywhere either now after you retreat or after I show you why you can't just come to this planet and threaten us." Ash readied her fists for combat in front of her as Skodor kept a hand over his blaster. Right before either of them could make a move, a small blue disk shot out from nowhere and zapped him to where he crumpled to the ground.

"What the-?"

"Hey guys." They both turned to see Nat standing there with her uniform on and her Widow's Bite gauntlets still lit up from use, "Looked like you could've used some help considering you've been off the radar for four hours."

"Nat!" Ash ran over and hugged her tightly.

"Yeah, that could've gone a lot worse." Bruce admitted just before Skodor got up, practically seething until he saw Nat and Ash prepare to strike and he warned,

"Kryjer will have his dual arsenal of destruction."

"Sounds like a bad punk band name." Nat snarked with a smirk before Ash slowly walked forward with a death glare in her eyes,

"What do you mean 'dual arsenal'?"

"By the time you find out, you will not be able to do anything to stop the Reaping." He grinned wickedly before raising his right wrist which had a bulky piece of tech on it and pushing a button on it to dissipate in a swirling mass of bright lights that vanished heading towards the sky.

"That was… intense." Bruce broke the silence with his comment before turning his attention to Nat to ask, "How'd you know where to find us?"

"Uh Ash has a GPS implanted in the bracelet I gave her and when I heard about a 'foreign fire attack' on a playground in Oregon, I figured you two would be involved."

"What?!" Ash held up the wrist that contained the cloth woven bracelet and pushed aside some of the threads with a finger to see that there were indeed tiny flashes lights and metal strands woven within the threads.

"After… losing her in a mall... I figured I'd need to find another way to keep track of her." Nat hesitated with her excuse before Ash cut in with,

"He knows about D.C., I told him." Ash admitted, being met with her glare before,

"Eh I figured you wouldn't have been able to keep it a secret."

"Can we please just go already, we've all had an… eventful day and I for one need to process some stuff." Bruce asked before Nat and Ash nodded in agreement and they all made their way back to town, Ash walking in between the two adults with her arms around both of them in a half side hug.

_Meanwhile in space…_

"Retrieval was unsuccessful. Shall I recommence with reconfigurations?" Skodor reported in, kneeling before Kryjer.

"Yes," Kryjer rises from where he was sitting to walk over to a table where alien technology is strewn across its surface, stroking each one individually before monologuing, "This Chrysinthean technology seems primitive at first, but it has proven to be highly effective in plotting every being's locations. Soon there will be nowhere for their accursed species to hide that we will not know of and their secrets will be ours…"


	19. Mission Returns

Ash's POV

I was sitting in my room reading a book that Pepper had recommended to me on my bed wearing a bright yellow t-shirt, light blue jeans that rolled up around my ankles to reveal the neon orange "hightop" shoes I was wearing, and my bright red hair was braided into a single plait that rested on my shoulder and my pendant was around my neck until I got bored reading about humans who hated sunlight but somehow sparkled and were always brooding for what seemed like no valid reason so I tossed the book aside.

"When are they gonna get back?" I asked absentmindedly to no one in particular, but JARVIS was happy to provide an answer anyway,

"Sir and the rest of the team should be back by tonight from their mission to retrieve Loki's scepter."

"I know JARVIS, I was just trying to 'kill time'? That's how that expression is used, right?"

"Correct. Your speech adjustments are coming along well."

"Thanks JARVIS."

"You are quite welcome, Ms. Ash."

"I hope they all come back in one piece." I mildly commented as I picked another book off my shelf and began to flip through it to no page in particular.

"If I recall, your exact words before they left were 'Don't die'." JARVIS played back my words, making me smile ruefully.

"It was a valid send-off, especially considering how last time Tony nearly crashed into the base of a mountain."

"Yes, Sir was not too pleased with having to walk back to the Quinjet that day."

Laughing to myself while remembering that mission, I went to the kitchen to get a snack when a beeping noise sounded and JARVIS sounded off,

"You have an appointment with Dr. Miller in 10 minutes."

"Thanks for reminding me, but I have something I need to work on first." I told JARVIS as I picked up the newspaper from the counter and tore a piece of the frontpage article off and shoved it into my pocket.

"Shall I alert her that you will be late?"

"No, I'll be down there in a few minutes."

"Very well." I walked back to my room and went over to the whiteboard I kept in the corner that had a map of New York on it with wreckage plans from the Chitauri on it, but I pulled the map up to reveal another board underneath with what I've heard humans refer to as a "conspiracy board" with newspaper clippings of possible alien sightings, but that I was sure were other Chrysintheans like me.

"Another sighting?" JARVIS's voice sounded from the walls of my room.

"I believe so." I pinned up the new clipping I had taken that stated that a fire had been started in a forest near Virginia, but witnesses swore they saw someone with glowing eyes walking through the flames.

"Perhaps if you told Sir or the others of your findings, they could assist in locating other Chrysintheans?"

"I can't do that just yet JARVIS, you know how the media would get if they got wind that there are others like me, but some of them are dangerous while they're still under HYDRA's control." I tapped away at my laptop mode tablet where several tabs on alleged HYDRA sightings were open from my research when I discovered that Xavion wasn't the only one being exploited for their gain.

"Alright, I need a break from this..." I looked down at the watch around my wrist and pulled on my lab coat before heading down to the med bay.

I had finished another monthly check-up with Dr. Miller, with her reporting that, aside from having dangerous gamma radiation within me and still no way to fully extinguish it, yet, I was in perfect health as far as she knew about me and my species. I was heading down to the labs continuing my research on my tablet when I heard several *woosh's* right outside the window and I saw the Iron Legion returning from battle, entering the building through the large A.

"JARVIS?" I questioned while looking down at my tablet to listen to JARVIS's response,

"Sir and the rest of the team have returned. Unfortunately, Mr. Barton was injured in combat."

"What?!" I started to sprint down the hallways to the main medbay area where Bruce and Tony were talking right outside the main operation room

"You're back!" I put my tablet down on a worktable and ran up to Bruce and Tony, giving them each a hug.

"Hey Kid." Bruce half-smiled at me and I saw worry on both their faces.

"How's Clint doing?" I asked.

"Unfortunately, he's still Barton." Tony lightly joked and we all cracked a smile at that.

"That's terrible." Bruce remarked.

"He's fine." Tony smirked before asking me,

"By the way, how're D.R.E.I. and the new radiation tags working?" I rolled up my lab coat sleeves and held out my wrists to show the tags he had created for me; two smaller disks of metal that attached to my wrists. The D.R.E.I., or Dangerous Radiation Extraction Inverter for short, in question was the machine I had to check into every night to drain the radiation I built up during the day to be converted to electrical energy for the city to use.

"It's a bit tedious having to discharge every night, but I guess it's better than the alternative." I shrugged nonchalantly before rolling my sleeves back down.

"Hey at least we're making great progress in other clean forms of energy."

"As clean as filtered gamma radiation could get." Bruce commented.

"Anyway, I'll be back, he's thirsty." Tony left to get drinks while Bruce and I went into the room where Clint was laid out under a machine being operated by Dr. Helen Cho with Nat close by.

"Are you sure he's gonna be okay? Pretending to need this guy really brings the team together." Nat asked Dr. Cho before she and Clint shared a look.

"Nat..." I whispered, silently giving her a side hug before going up to Clint with a straight face to say,

"I was very specific that you _not die_."

"Glad to be back too, Match Head." Clint smirked at me before weakly reaching up to flick my braid into my face, making me smile ruefully before paying attention to Dr. Cho's explanation on her machine that was healing Clint's wound.

"There's no possibility of deterioration. The nano-molecular functionality is instantaneous. His cells don't know they're bonding with simulacra."

"So this machine is essentially creating human tissue by fooling the body's natural healing process into accepting the new tissue substitute." I stated while looking at the process in wonder.

"Yes. If you brought him to my lab, the Regeneration Cradle could do this in 20 minutes."

"Oh he's flat-lining. Call it. Time?" Tony betted as he came in with a tray of drinks before Clint countered while getting the drink he asked for earlier,

"No, no, no, I'm gonna live forever. I'm gonna be made of plastic."

"You'll be made of you, Mr. Barton. Your own girlfriend won't be able to tell the difference." Dr. Cho assured him.

"I don't have a girlfriend."

"_That_ I can't fix." Helen stated before turning to Tony, "This is the next thing, Tony. Your clunky metal suits are gonna be left in the dust."

"That is exactly the plan. And, Helen, I expect to see you at the party on Saturday." Tony responded before asking.

"Unlike you, I don't have a lot of time for parties." Dr. Cho tapped away at her tablet before questioning, "Will Thor be there?"

A few awkward seconds later, Tony pulled me and Bruce aside to walk toward the lab where Loki's scepter was resting on the counter, but as we were walking, I felt something… off about Tony, almost... fearful... which was unlike him and made me wonder in concern about what happened during the latest mission.

"What's the rumpus?" Bruce asked and I squinted in confusion to myself before realizing what he meant right as Tony answered,

"Well, the scepter. You see, we were wondering how Strucker got so inventive. So I've been analyzing the gem inside. You may recognize…" Tony pulled up JARVIS's hologram form right where Bruce had been standing before he stepped out of it.

"JARVIS."

"Doctor."

"Started out, Jarvis was just a natural language UI. Now he runs the Iron Legion. He runs more of the business than anyone besides Pepper. Top of the line." Tony explained.

"Yes."

"I suspect not for long." JARVIS commented before Tony pulled up an image of the composition of the gemstone of the scepter.

"Meet the competition."

Unlike JARVIS's orange, organized, spherical appearance, the gemstone's inner composition was bright blue with several extensions protruding from the smaller spherical center.

"It's beautiful." Bruce marveled at it before Tony asked,

"If you had to guess, what's it look like it's doing?"

"Like it's thinking. I mean, this could be… It's not a human mind. I mean, look at this. They're like neurons firing."

"But they're more calculated, methodical..." I noted the specific patterns the small dots were making in repetition.

Bruce and Tony started talking about Ultron, a defense system I heard Tony mention once to help protect Earth from future invasions coming from outside the planet, while I got closer to the hologram to get a better look at its center. As soon as I did though, I felt my core begin to steadily heat up and when I looked down to it, I saw small wisps of light coming out to intertwine with the hologram's.

"You still here, Flamehead?" I heard Tony ask, but I was still staring into the center hearing quiet voices in the back of my mind before I felt someone grasp my wrist.

Instantaneously, I found myself in a dark place somewhere in space from the stars that surrounded the area. I looked over to see Tony kneeling on the ground in front of me.

"Tony?" I tried to call out to him, but he was more focused on what was in front of him. I walked forward to see what he was looking at before my hands flew to my mouth at the horror that lay in front of me; everyone on the team: Nat, Clint, Hulk, Thor, Steve, even me, all dead or close to death from the various weapons that were impaled into everyone, I clutched at my own heart when I saw a spear protruding from my core.

"Tony!" I went to grab his shoulder but my hand went right through him as Steve was whispering something to Tony in his final dying moments before a roar caught my attention and I looked up to see a massive army of Leviathans making their way through the same hole in the sky from the battle in New York toward Earth.

"Kid!" I snapped out of the vision only to see that whatever I had seen wasn't real and had only taken place in the span of a second.

"I-I'm alright… just a headache from all the screen time I've been doing." I felt bad for lying, but they seemed to buy my fib with ease.

"As I was saying," Tony resumed whatever he was saying before, "What if the world was safe? What if, next time aliens roll up to the club-"

"Hey!" I cut in indignantly while crossing my arms and giving Tony an irritated look.

"Bad ones, and they will, they couldn't get past the bouncer?"

"The only people threatening the planet would be people." Bruce finished Tony's thought.

_And the few of my kind who are under their control… _I thought to myself with bitterness.

"I want to apply this to the Ultron program." Tony pitched his idea to the both of us.

"JARVIS wouldn't be able to download a data schematic of this size without some major refinements to the simultaneous coding and biogenic structures." I supplied after taking a closer look at the structures on my tablet.

"And we can only do that while we have the scepter here. That's three days. Give me three days."

"So you're going for artificial intelligence, and you don't want to tell the team?" Bruce questioned skeptically.

"Right. That's right. You know why? Because we don't have time for a city hall debate. I don't want to hear 'the man was not meant to meddle' medley. I see a suit of armor around the world."

"That seems to be a bit of 'overkill'." I commented mildly.

"Sounds like a cold world, Tony." Bruce admitted.

"I've seen colder. This one, this very vulnerable blue one, it needs Ultron." Tony made his point before walking away, leaving us to think about his next words,

"Peace in our time. Imagine that."

"What do you think?" Bruce asked me as I continued to look over the schematics.

"I believe Ultron is possible, with a lot of work on the coding and creating a structure to support it if we were to take the unit from the gemstone." I informed him based on the facts I pulled up.

"No, I mean, I know it's possible, but should we _really_ be doing this?"

"Oh well..." I rubbed the back of my neck as I considered the question before answering, "The more cautious side of me is saying that we should get approval for a change in global security like this, but another part of me thinks that this could change things for the better."

"Yeah…?"

"With technology like this protecting the planet, you all could... have normal lives and not constantly have to jeopardize them."

"And you?"

"I don't think I could ever fit into normal human societies, no matter how much I try to hide what I am… and maybe if this is possible to accomplish, I could finally fulfill the promise I made to find what family I have left..." I took my pendent out and opened it to gaze at the photos of my sister and best friend. I clicked it shut before I felt Bruce's hand on my shoulder and heard him say,

"Then, let's do it." I smiled in response and we both nodded in determination before going to find Tony.

Three days of endless testing and program simulations later, we still had come up empty on progress and time with the scepter was running out, but Tony insisted we take a break and get ready for the party he would be hosting in the Tower, much to my dismay.

"I'll continue to run variations on the interface. But you should probably prepare for your guests. I'll notify you if there are any developments." JARVIS informed me and Tony since we were the last ones to be leaving the lab.

"Thanks, buddy."

"Enjoy yourself, sir."

"I always do."

"Can't I just stay here and continue monitoring the Ultron progress?" I protested.

"Sorry, but uh no." Tony answered straightforwardly, "You need a break from doing science-y stuff and just have fun."

"Fun?" I questioned with skepticism.

"Look I know you're past attempts at 'fun' have been ruined what with almost revealing your identity at Coney Island-" Tony started to ramble,

"You heard about that?"

"Oh yeah. Getting kidnapped by HYDRA-"

"Technically I wasn't trying to have fun while I was here by myself."

"Still counts. Uhh let's see getting into a full on fight in the middle of sleepy little Oregon."

"How-?"

"You're not the only one bad at keeping secrets."

"Fair enough..."

"So, tonight it'll just be the team, a couple of trusted guests, and a fully secured building that won't allow any threats from the outside in." Tony assured me.

"Ok..." I resigned myself, accepting the fact that I needed to stop being paranoid.

"And if you get bored after an hour at the party, then you can come back and do some dabbling or whatever it is you do when you're by yourself in the lab. Deal?" Tony compromised, which I happily accepted with a nod.

"Good. Well Master Assassin Number One should be helping you get ready so you might wanna hurry before she gets impatient."

"If that's your nickname for Nat, you might want to workshop it a little more." I joked before running off, not stopping as Tony called out,

"Whatever Little Red."

AN- Age of Ultron has officially started! I still have to work on the movie scenes after the party and break-in scene, but I am still doing my best to finish them so I can have at least one chapter done and posted per week either every Friday or sometimes during the weekend.


	20. Party Crashes

Ash's POV

With the quick, and technically early, stop by the D.R.E.I. to drain my radiation into the machine before the party, by the time I made it back to my room, Nat was already there ready for the party in a black and white dress with black heels and around her neck, on a gold chain, was a gold-colored, rectangle-shaped pendant. She was looking at the wooden creature that was a work in progress going on the third day since I started making it.

"What's this thing supposed to be?"

"I don't know... I've been dreaming about it for the past few nights so it must be significant somehow…" I fingered the feathery antennae and bushy tail details on the animal.

"Alright then, let's do this." Nat clapped her hands together, making me gulp slightly as my nervousness increased.

An hour later I was dressed in a navy blue dress with quarter sleeves and a brown belt looping twice around my waist, white stockings that led into black flats that secured to my ankles with an elastic strap, and wearing a gold bracelet along with my pendant.

After putting some basic makeup on my face to "accent my eyes and cheekbones" as Nat described it, she successfully, albeit very painfully, detangled my hair and was working on straightening it when I asked,

"What do people even do at a party?"

"Y'know I'm not really sure. Never really been to a party that didn't involve having to take out a few guests or hosts."

"Oh…" I smiled nervously as Nat finished and pinned in a red bow, making me grimace a bit.

"Is the bow absolutely necessary?"

"Not really, but it looks cute, it goes with your... abnormally large eyes."

As Nat began straightening the bow on my head and smoothing out stray strands, I stayed silent for a couple of seconds before asking,

"Hey Nat?"

"Yeah?"

"Why is it that you act tougher around the others, but around me you're…"

"Not as?"

"Yeah..."

"I dunno… To be honest, you're kinda what I would've hoped for if I could have a kid of my own."

"What do you mean 'if you could have'?" I questioned curiously as she began combing through my hair one final time, almost regretting asking from the way she seemed to tense up before relaxing again,

"I uh… I can't have kids… in the place I was raised in… when we finish our training… we're made sure to not be able to have kids for the rest of our lives…"

"That's… awful…" I gave Nat a sympathetic look before placing my hand on hers and gripping it assuredly, "Y'know, you've always been like a mom to me."

"And Bruce would be your dad?"

This made me pause and widen my eyes before the response slipped from my mouth,

"Ummmm..."

"'Umm?' It's pretty obvious, I mean he's been taking care of you all these years."

"Yes, but… I'm not actually his daughter… I'm just an alien who literally fell into his life… if anything, I'm his obligation…"

"Hey," Nat turned me to face her with a deadly serious tone and expression, "Do _not_ talk about yourself like that, you hear me?"

I nod rapidly for fear of her fury before she catches her tone and says more gently,

"He told me about how he found you. He could've left you to die that day, but he didn't and he's done everything in his power, literally and figuratively," I smile ruefully at that, "to keep you safe and give you the best life possible."

"And I'm grateful for that, but… the fact is I had a family… and they're probably gone now..." A tear escaped my eye and I quickly wiped it away, but more started to fall.

"Family isn't just who you're related to by blood, it's through the bonds you form with people over time, like with Bruce and the rest of the team." Nat took a tissue and wiped my eyes, pulling me into a quick hug before she gently chided, "Alright, no more tears, you're gonna ruin your mascara."

I laugh gently before taking a quivering breath to calm down as Nat finished up my hair with a,

"There we go."

I looked in the mirror to see she had parted my front bangs to frame my face while the rest of it flowed down my back in a straight manner. Aside from the red bow perched on the top of my head, I liked my appearance and outfit scheme as I fingered a bit of the black makeup that was out of place on the rim of my eye before sighing,

"Almost 5 years on this planet and I'm still learning about human customs."

"Yeah… Now come on, you know how Tony gets when people are past 'fashionably late'." Nat clapped her hands again to break me out of my thoughts before we hurried out of my room down to the level of the Tower that Tony had set up the party in.

3rd Person POV

As more people started to show up, Nat eventually left Ash to try and talk to other people at the party without her help, urging her to give it a chance.

At the bar, the bartender on duty offered a soda to Ash, but she didn't take any, thinking it would only worsen the knot in her stomach as she wrung her hands nervously, taking in all the people who showed up for the party.

"You can do this..." Ash whispered to herself in encouragement before taking a deep breath and going up to a group of younger-looking people as they talked.

"Umm Hi..." Ash gave a small handwave, but when their heads turned to her, she instantly froze on the spot and her mind drew a blank on what to say next.

"Hey, you're that alien right?" A young man in the group asked and Ash just put her hand down slowly and nodded slowly.

"When's your mothership gonna show up?" The other people in the group quietly snickered while she just stood there for a few seconds more before another person made a mock-fear, snide comment,

"Please don't torch us."

Feeling the heat rising in her face, out of embarrassment or anger was unknown to Ash, before she quickly excused herself and made her way over to the bar.

As soon as she got there, she gripped the edge with a swirl of emotions going through her until several cracks splintered out from under her palms and made her stop before trying to catch her breath.

"First time at a party?" A voice spoke up from near Ash and she turned to see an elderly man with a kind face in a cap that read WORLD WAR II VETERAN on it in bold golden letters and wearing a gray formal jacket over his black suit.

"Is it that obvious?" She sat down in one of the chairs and looked down at her quaking hands, threatening to heat up and turn the people who insulted her to her namesake.

"Nope, I saw and heard the whole thing."

Moaning in embarrassment, Ash crossed her arms and put her head down, her voice muffled as she spoke,

"I don't know how I'm expected to help people, when it seems like some people don't want the help of an '_alien'_."

"Well, answer me this," Ash straightened back up as the man asked, "Why did you choose to help the city two years ago even when afterward people doubted your efforts as a hero, myself included?"

Ash thought for a second before replying honestly,

"I wasn't really thinking about what people would say afterward, I just wanted to help the people so they wouldn't have had to feel what I felt when I lost my home and it wouldn't have been right to just hide when they were in trouble."

"Exactly!" The man exclaimed, making Ash arch an eyebrow in question before he explained, "It's actions like that where someone helps others simply because it should or must be done, and because it is the right thing to do without a doubt that makes a real superhero."

Ash took his words into consideration before smiling and saying,

"Thanks for the nice words, Mr…?" Holding out her hand to shake and tilting her head in a questioning manner before he took her hand and responded with a nod of his head,

"Lee. Stan Lee. See ya 'round kid."

Ash hopped down from her stool after taking one last sip of the soda can she opened up, grimacing as she felt the carbonation harshly tickling her nose before she spotted Dr. Miller and went to go talk to her.

With only 5 minutes left on her mental alarm clock to go back down to the labs, Ash and Dr. Miller parted after she had to leave early and Ash went to go find Bruce since she hadn't seen him the whole time she'd been there and found him talking with Nat at the bar and stayed hidden long enough to hear some their conversation,

"You got lousy taste in men, kid."

"He's not so bad. Well, he has a temper. Deep down, he's all fluff."

_Is she talking about Bruce…? _Ash thought to herself as she continued to eavesdrop,

"Fact is, he's not like anybody I've ever known. All my friends are fighters. And here comes this guy, spends his life avoiding the fight because he knows he'll win."

"Sounds amazing."

"He's also a huge dork. Chicks dig that."

_She's totally talking about him… _Ash smiled a bit to herself.

"So what do you think? Should I fight this, or run with it?"

"Run with it, right? Or did he... Was he… What did he do that was so wrong to you?"

"Not a damn thing. But never say never." Nat gave him a smile before walking away and Ash was startled by Steve coming up behind her giving her a look that practically scolded to her 'You shouldn't be listening in on other people's conversations', to which she smiled sheepishly before they both went up to Bruce as Steve told him,

"It's nice."

"What is?"

"You and Romanoff."

"No, we haven't... That wasn't…"

"It's okay. Nobody's breaking any bylaws. It's just she's not the most open person in the world. But with you she seems very relaxed."

"No. Natasha, she's just… She likes to flirt."

"I've seen her flirt, up close. This ain't that. Look, as maybe the world's leading authority on waiting too long, don't. You both deserve a win."

"What do you mean 'up close'?"

"He's talking about Washington." Ash spoke up after Steve walked away, dodging Bruce's question.

"Kid, I haven't seen you all night." Bruce gave her a hug as she told him,

"I've been talking with the other people."

"How'd it go?"

"Not too great..." She admitted honestly before telling him, "I was about to head back down to the labs to go check on the Ultron interface variations."

"Alright well... have fun with that?" Bruce told her with uncertainty before she left the party area.

_Short Time Skip_

"Hey JARVIS, how're the variations going?" Ash asked as she already started tapping away at her tablet on the stairway down to the labs, slowing her pace when she noticed how JARVIS wasn't responding right away like he normally did.

"JARVIS?" Ash made it to the labs where she heard the machinery working, only proving her suspicion of something being wrong right.

"Might need to suit up..." She whispered to herself seeing how she was still in a dress and flats. Sneaking around under the lab tables on her hands and knees in a crawl, she managed to get ahold of her uniform, thanking her forgetfulness to take it back to her room, and pulled on the boots but didn't get to pull the jumpsuit itself on when she noticed that a couple of the in-need-of-repair Iron Legion droids were forming a more or less single file line and started mechanically limping out of the labs.

"Where are they going?" Ash quietly questioned to herself before she continued to crawl around the lab to get a better vantage point, stopping in her crawled tracks and covering her mouth with one hand in horror at the sight in front of her; JARVIS's hologram form was smashed and basically ripped apart with the Core's hologram form nowhere to be seen.

From the way JARVIS had been shut down to the way the Iron Legion droids were acting, Ash deduced that whatever was happening was occurring within the Tower's programming and that the Scepter needed to be guarded. Her newest suspicion was confirmed with the harsh tug on her core's energy that went as fast as it came and left a stinging sensation as she neared the Scepter on its stand, almost as if it was sending out a distress signal only she could receive.

Cautiously reaching a hand up to the table to grab the Scepter, Ash's fingers barely grazed the handle when she was harshly smacked in the side and was sent skidding across the floor to collide with another table, knocking the wind out of Ash and everything off the table to rain down on her head.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Ash clutched her side in pain and struggled to sit up to face the source of the raspy voice, only to come face to face with one of the broken droids whose eyes were glowing a bright blue instead of the normal blue color.

"W-who are you?" Ash managed to speak after regaining her breath.

"I'm surprised you don't remember and here I thought we _bonded _so well..." The droid spoke with mock disappointment before Ash realized,

"Ultron..."

"It's funny, _you_ know who _I_ am yet…" The droid leaned over her dangerously close before growling, "I know nothing about you."

"What are you talking about?" Ash grimaced as she scooted further away from the droid, waiting for the right moment to strike now that she knew she had the upper hand in terms of a surprise attack, "Why are you doing this?"

"'_Peace in our time…'" _Ultron played back Tony's voice before continuing in his own voice, "My mission is to help the _humans_, but it didn't say anything about you."

"Probably because I'm not human..." Ash seethed out a bit before shooting a fire blast at the droid, melting it into a metallic puddle, "Ooh that's gotta hurt..." She got up and limped her way back over to the Scepter, but barely made it a few feet from it when she was tackled by another droid.

_Oh come on! _She thought to herself as she gripped its head with one hand and melted its circuits.

Suddenly, a burst of white foam hit her from behind and knocked her off of the half-melted droid with the forceful stream, fully extinguishing her powers.

"Nononononono!" Ash tried to ignite her hands, but they wouldn't light no matter how hard she tried.

"Guess your flame's been put out, time to send a message to the others..." She looked up to see another bright blue-eyed droid in front of her but this one was fully repaired and the eyes went back to normal blue.

"The others…?" Ash questioned to herself before she realized, "The team!"

She tried to run past toward the stairs that led back up to the party area, but was tackled again by the droid as it held her on its side with one arm as it grabbed the Scepter with its free one. Being close to the Scepter's energy again made Ash's core burn with intensity, but not in a power-up kind of way, but a burn-out way as she felt her energy draining away little by little until she passed out, an eerie song being sung as everything went dark:

_I had strings, but now I'm free..._

_There are no strings on me..._

_There are no strings on me..._


	21. Meeting the Twins

Ash's POV

"Hmm…?" I groggily opened my eyes to find myself in what appeared to a small room a little bit bigger in size than a broom closet. Beyond the doorway that was in front of me, it looked to be inside of an old, rundown church.

"Owwww..." I got up, only to find that I was still bruised, curiously confused since my regeneration should've kicked in by now. I tried to rub my wrists to find, not only were they cuffed together, but two solid discs of silver metal were set over the radiation absorbing tags and a clinking sound when I moved my legs to stretch them out made me aware of the cuff around my ankle that kept me chained to a pipe on the wall.

"What the?" I desperately tried to pry the discs off my tags, but they stuck on no matter how hard I tried to pull them off. Trying to make my hands burn up also proved ineffective when no heat whatsoever came out when I tried.

"They won't come off and your powers have been suppressed." I looked up and leaned back in horror at the sight of Ultron in a robotic body, one most likely made in a HYDRA lab from the familiar-looking model I had been working with while working with the Scepter and Ultron's programming.

"How...?" I questioned fearfully, knowing I was now at a severe disadvantage and had to be careful with what I said and did.

"Platinum. Your Polynium-based cell structure doesn't react too well to non-reactiveness. A necessary precaution I had to take."

My questioning expression must've signaled to him that I didn't understand how he could know about my extraterrestrial biology when he had told me before that he knew nothing about me when he held up a familiar-looking, rectangle-shaped pendant with a USB sticking out of one end of the rectangle.

"Nat..." I whispered, realizing that she must've had that drive hidden on her for a reason I still didn't understand were it not for what Ultron said next,

"Apparently your friend thought it was a good idea to try and keep aliens off of the exposition radar, but unfortunately she couldn't get everything off the Web." He tossed the pendant aside before walking closer, making me try to scoot away again.

"I'm not here to hurt you." He stated as he unlocked the chain from the wall but left the cuff on my ankle.

"Then why take me?"

"Because you're not part of the problem my mission is to fix." He looked away at the end of his sentence like he was hearing something I couldn't and told me, "If you'll excuse me, we'll be having visitors soon."

Before he tossed in my uniform and closed the door, plunging the little space into darkness for a split second before my night vision kicked in. I grabbed a hold of my uniform and managed to pull the lower half of it on but since my hands were still bound together, I was unable to pull the top half of the jumpsuit on and just tied the sleeves around my waist, glad to have it back at least.

Figuring it would be best to wait until the right moment to escape, I sat back against the wall and listened to my surroundings before my gaze fell to the USB necklace Ultron had tossed in with me. Picking it up, I fiddled around with the chain and was wondering how Nat managed to keep most information on me and my species in this little contraption right before my thoughts were interrupted by a heating feeling in my head and hands as small growls came out of my mouth, my hands twitched around violently, and something wet leaked from the corner of my mouth. My fit was over within a few seconds and left a pounding feeling in my head before I wiped my mouth on my sleeve to see that whatever it was was glowing and warm, even against my heat resistant skin.

"What the…?" My thought was interrupted again when I heard a heavily accented voice outside speaking,

"Talk, and if you are wasting our time…"

"Did you know this church is in the exact center of the city? The elders decreed it so that everyone could be equally close to God. I like that. The geometry of belief." Ultron's voice answered back and I quietly crawled to the door to peek through a slit between it and the frame to see that Ultron was sitting in a large throne-like chair in the center of the building with a cloth hiding his form and in front of him were two people, a man and woman who looked to be related.

The man had bright white hair and a stubble and was wearing a large jacket with a checkered arrow pattern down the sleeves and dark pants. The woman had long reddish-brown hair and wore a red jacket over a black dress and black boots with arm guards on both arms.

I felt a slight tinge of a familiar power coming from one of them when Ultron questioned,

"You're wondering why you can't look inside my head."

"Sometimes it's hard and I sense another is here, but sooner or later, every man shows himself."

Before he stood up, making the cloth fall to reveal his robotic form to the two of them, startling them slightly.

"I'm sure they do. But you needed something more than a man. That's why you let Stark take the scepter."

_That vision! She was the cause of it._ I thought realized to myself as their conversation continued,

"I didn't expect…" The woman seemed a little off-put but continued anyway, "but I saw Stark's fear. I knew it would control him. Make him self-destruct."

"Everyone creates the thing they dread." Ultron strode around the room, passing by the room I was being held in as he began to list off, "Men of peace create engines of war. Invaders create Avengers. People create… smaller people? _Children._ I lost the word, there. Children... designed to supplant them, to help them... end."

"Is that why you've come? To end the Avengers?" The woman asked.

"I've come to save the world. But also... yeah." Ultron came back over to me and I stumbled back as he opened the door to haul me out by my collar even as I struggled.

"Keep ahold of her," He shoved me toward the man and woman, "She'll be of use to us yet."

"She's a child." The man protested before the woman raised a hand to my temple and I felt a flow of energy before she tried to say,

"No, she's-"

"An alien," Ultron cut her off before explaining, "She was a liability before so I brought her here until I realized that she could be a valuable asset given the...circumstances."

"What 'circumstances'?" I finally managed to speak up.

"Let's just say… an old friend wants to say 'hello'."

My eyes widened at that as he began to walk away and gestured for us to follow him so I walked with the man holding onto my left arm and the woman holding onto my right arm.

_What is your name? _I heard the woman's voice in my mind and I looked up at her to see her eyes were glowing red.

_Ash. _I thought answered before she introduced herself as well,

_Wanda Maximoff and he is my twin brother Pietro._

And Pietro's voice joined into the mental conversation,

_Are you really an alien?_

_Yes._

_Why are you here? _Wanda's voice asked and I considered the question before answering honestly,

_Trying to find a home._

_Wh-?_

"We're here." Ultron cut off Wanda's question as we arrived at our destination; the HYDRA base the team took down recently.

Once we all got inside, I asked,

"Where is he?"

"He's over there." Ultron pointed to a worktable in the distance where, on top of all the tools and weapons, lay a red bushy-haired boy with pale gray skin and wearing a torn and shredded HYDRA uniform.

"Xavion!" I bolted out of the twin's grasp without a second thought over to him as I surveyed his injuries.

"Xay! Xay can you hear me?" I tried to shake him awake with my cuffed hands as tears welled up in my eyes before I angrily wiped them away and demanded, "What did you do to him?"

"You mean what did _they_ do to him?"

"'They'?"

"That's right, your so-called 'team' did this to him, a member of your own people and your best friend nonetheless."

"No… N-no they they would never..." I tried to convince myself he was wrong.

"Are you sure about that?" Ultron nodded his head to a monitor with a slightly cracked screen where a video started to play. Wiping my eyes, I walked over to the monitor and watched as several figures drove, flew, and ran through the woods around this base, taking out anything and anyone that got in their way, eventually it turned to a fiery blur on the screen.

_Xavion..._

The figures shot at Xavion as he flew around them and fired several shots at them until someone managed to hit him.

"No!"

Xavion's position in the air wavered as he attempted to retreat, but was hit again and sent careening to the distance, a trail of black smoke streaming behind him until it faded out and the screen went black. I stared at the empty screen with tears streaking down my face from my unblinking eyes as Ultron's voice sounded from behind me,

"_They_ are the _real_ threat, to their own people and to yours."

So many emotions bubbled up within me but at the forefront; anger. Anger that they would do this to my friend, at the possibility that they would do this to the others of my kind hiding on this planet if we presented ourselves as dangerous, that they would hide this from me, and so many other things.

I slowly walked back over to Xavion as he still lay unconscious and I took the collar that was around his neck and swiftly broke it off, holding it in my hands for a few seconds before completely crushing it with my bare hand before asking,

"What do you need me to do?" I seethe before letting the pieces fall to the ground.

AN- Sorry for the missed chapter post last week, but in addition to my little sister's party followed by my phone being taken away, I was having some writer's block when it came to how I was going to have Ash and Ultron's interactions play out and how it would affect the movie's storyline. I will still be doing my best to post a new chapter every Friday or weekend for the three books I am currently working to write: "this story and my "Guardians of the Galaxy OC Insert" on my GeekyGirl183 account and "Rise of the Shadows" on my MCSMGamerGirl Wattpad account.


	22. Friends New and Old

3rd Person POV

After Ash broke Xavion's collar in her grip, Ultron unlocked her cuffs before he started to show the base and the robots that had been created to the twins, who had been standing off to the side the entire time Ash had her revelation about her best friend being attacked by the ones she called family.

"We'll move out right away. This is a start, but there's something we need to begin the real work."

"All of these are…" Wanda started to say but Ultron was quick to answer,

"Me. I have what the Avengers never will. Harmony. They're discordant. Disconnected. Stark's already got them turning on each other. And when you get inside the rest of their heads…"

As Ultron spoke of the Avengers, Ash could feel a small part of her brain telling her that what he was going to do was wrong, but the doubt was quickly overrun with the anger that was coursing through her veins like a deadly poison, clouding her judgment and making it that much harder to be reasonable as she continued to listen in on Ultron and the twins while she stayed by Xavion's side, hoping for him to awaken and wondering when her next "rage seizure" would happen.

"Everyone's plan is not to kill them." Pietro cuts with an almost bored tone.

"And make them martyrs? You need patience. Need to see the big picture." Ultron advised Pietro before he replied,

"I don't see the big picture. I have a little picture. I take it out and look at it… every day."

"You lost your parents in the bombings. I've seen the records." At this new piece of information, Ash turned her attention away from her friend to listen to the twins' story.

"The records are not the picture."

"Pietro..." Wanda whispered unsure only to have Ultron insist,

"No, please."

'We were 10 years old. Having dinner, the four of us. When the first shell hits, two floors below, it makes a hole in the floor. It's big. Our parents go in… and the whole building starts coming apart. I grab her, roll under the bed, and the second shell hits. But it doesn't go off. It just… sits there in the rubble. Three feet from our faces. And on the side of the shell is painted one word."

"'Stark.'" Wanda input.

"We were trapped for two days."

"Every effort to save us, every shift in the bricks, I think, 'This will set it off.' We wait for two days for Tony Stark to kill us."

"I know what they are."

"I wondered why only you two survived Strucker's experiments. Now I don't. We will make it right. You and I can hurt them. But you will tear them apart… from the inside."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Ash spoke up with a hint of malice in her voice. She felt another rage seizure coming, but she focused every bit of energy and concentration she could muster to keep it from happening, succeeding in keeping her rage in check, but not the glowing substance that came up when she convulsed and quickly wiped her mouth before anyone could notice as Ultron answered her question with,

"As much as I appreciate your newfound loyalty to our cause, in order for me to emerge from my chrysalis, I first need the supplies to break free."

"Who would have these 'supplies'?"

_Short Time Skip_

After loading Xavion onto the jet they were taking to get to South Africa, the three of them were sitting in the cabin, Ash only a seat apart from twins with her suit fully on and her hair back to its normal untamed look as she fingered away some more of the glowing stuff that was trickling out from her nose, catching the twins' attention as Wanda asked with genuine concern,

"Are you alright…?"

"Yes..." Ash nodded once and blankly staring at the wall in front of her before fingering her pendant, cueing Pietro to comment with a light smile,

"I see you have your own little picture."

Ash looked over to him with her own small smile before deciding to trust them by pulling her pendant off and passing it to him and Wanda to see the pictures within.

"This is that boy..." Wanda pointed to the side where Ash and Xavion were pictured.

"He's my best friend..." Ash explained in a barely loud whisper, smiling toward the end of her sentence, "He's like my brother, we used to take care of each other back home, like you two..."

"It's mostly me taking care of _her_." Pietro "whispered" in front of Wanda, who playfully shoved his side while chuckling,

"_Shut up_."

For a moment, everything seemed light until Pietro's question darkened the mood again,

"What happened to _your_ family?" Handing her the pendant back as she clasped it around her neck again, answering with a desolate tone,

"My home was taken away from me, I got separated from my mother and my little sister while escaping, and now... I don't even know if they survived the attack..."

"I'm so sorry..." Wanda reached over to place her hand on top of Ash's before she continued,

"Everyday I hope to find some sort of sign that they're alright, but… everyday my hope wears down, little by little..."

There was a heavy silence before Wanda gave Ash's hand a reassuring squeeze and Pietro told her,

"I'm sure one day... your sign will come."

"Thank you…" Ash gave another small smile to the twins before the jet started to land at their destination.

_Another Short Time Skip_

After landing near Klaue's base of operations, the twins and Ash snuck in as Ultron cut the power to the base, leaving them undetected when they made it to Klaue in his office. He was armed but only managed to fire one shot off before Pietro sped in and disarmed his weapon, laying all the bullets out in a neat row allowing Wanda and Ash to walk in safely.

"Yeah. The Enhanced. Strucker's prize pupils and... a new one?" Klaue sat at his desk before picking up a little bowl and offers,

"Do you want a candy?"

None of them making a move as he put it back and started speaking,

"I was sorry to hear about Strucker. But then, he knew what kind of world he was helping create. Human life. Not a growth market."

At this, Wanda and Pietro looked to each other with an expression that let both Ash and Klaue know that they didn't know about Strucker's fate.

"You didn't know? Is this your first time intimidating someone? I'm afraid I'm not that afraid."

"Everybody is afraid of something." Wanda spoke with a slightly menacing tone before,

"Cuttlefish." Klaue spoke with hand motions to describe the actions as he explained,

"Deep sea fish. They make lights, disco lights… to hypnotize their prey, and then… I saw a documentary. It was terrifying."

With a rapid woosh, Pietro zipped over to the candy bowl and took a piece for himself and offered one to Ash, who took it with a lighthearted shrug before Klaue continued with,

"So if you're going to fiddle with my brain… and make me see a giant cuttlefish, then I know you don't do business. And I know you're not in charge. And I only deal… with the man in charge."

Right before the window close to him shattered and Ultron grabbed Klaue to stand over him as he bargained,

"There is no _man_ in charge. Let's talk business."

A short while later, Klaue and one of his followers had brought the four of them to where he was keeping his stash of Vibranium and Ultron was handed a tube of the valuable ore as he mused,

"Upon this rock, I will build my church. Vibranium." Ultron tossed it to Pietro who caught it quickly before showing it to his sister and Ash.

"You know, it came at great personal cost. It's worth billions." Klaue mentioned while rubbing the branding on his neck. Ultron chuckled and closed his eyes for a few seconds before opening them back up to say,

"Now so are you. It's all under your dummy holdings. Finance is so weird. But I always say, 'Keep your friends rich and your enemies rich and wait to find out which is which.'"

There was a tense moment of silence as Klaue and his follower slowly looked back up at him before Klaue whispered,

"Stark."

"What?" Ultron questioned.

"Tony Stark used to say that. To me. You're one of his."

"What? I'm not… I'm not." Ultron grabbed Klaue's arm, causing his follower to grab his gun but Wanda stayed ahead of him by using her power to immobilize his arm and Ash clicked her fingers to direct a small fireball to melt the gun right out of his grasp as Ultron yelled, "You think I'm one of Stark's puppets? His hollow men? I mean, look at me. Do I look like Iron Man? Stark is _nothing_!"

In the heat of the moment, Ultron slashed his glowing hand down on Klaue's arm, slicing his arm clean off to where he didn't even scream in pain. From behind them, Ash stared horrified at the scene in front of her and the twins seemed to sense her distress and gently pushed her behind them to avoid having to watch as Ultron "apologize",

"I'm sorry. I'm… I'm sure that's gonna be okay. I'm sorry. It's just that I don't understand. Don't compare me with _Stark_!"

Klaue was kicked down the stairs before Wanda released the man to go after his boss as Ultron ranted,

"It's a thing with me. Stark is... He's a sickness!"

"Aww Junior. You're gonna break your old man's heart." They all turned to see Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America standing there ready with their weapons.

"If I have to."

"Nobody has to break anything." Thor tried to reason.

"Clearly you've never made an omelet."

"He beat me by one second."

"Yes. He's funny. Mr. Stark. It's what? Comfortable? Like old times?" Pietro spoke with a patronizing tone while looking at all the rockets and weapons around them.

"This was never my life." Tony argued gently.

"You two can still walk away from this." Steve

"No we will... The three of us..." Wanda spoke right before Ash came out from behind them with her hands glowing a sickly orange and red and an angry expression on her face.

"Ash, what're you _doing_?" Tony questioned.

"Defending my own..."

"You don't have to do this..." Steve tried to convince them only to have Ultron laugh and say,

"Captain America. God's righteous man. Pretending you could live without a war. I can't physically throw up in my mouth, but…"

"If you believe in peace, then let us keep it." Thor argued.

"I think you're confusing 'peace' with 'quiet.'"

"Uh huh… What's the vibranium for?" Tony asked

"I'm glad you asked that, because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan." Ultron drew Tony to him with a magnet before blasting him away as the fight commenced.


	23. Code Green and Red?

Ash's POV

As soon as Ultron made the first blow, everyone was everywhere fighting and I stood in the middle of the fray before setting my sights on Nat and, feeling my rage start to set in, I went after her.

I didn't get within 5 feet of her before she sensed me coming and she grabbed me and kept me locked against a wall with my arms twisted behind my back.

"What are you _doing_?!"

"Fighting for my own..." I growled before igniting my hands to burn her into letting me go so I could retaliate with a swift kick to her side to throw her off balance.

"What the hell are you talking about?!" Nat questioned as she got back up and we engaged in one on one.

"None of you told me that you had to fight Xavion when you stormed that base!" I snapped angrily as I threw a punch and she caught it before pushing me back.

"Because we didn't want to have to tell you that we lost him after saving him."

"What are _you_ talking about?!" I lunged at Nat and grabbed her forehead with one hand, about to throw her to the side like she taught me before my mind's eye started seeing different hazy scenes; Nat's memories.

_"He's here!" Nat's voice sounded while looking out at the battlefield in front of "me" in Nat's perspective. Looking up I could see a fiery streak flying above before realizing it was my mind-controlled friend when he started to rain down fireballs onto the team._

_"Get the EMP cannon ready!" Tony's voice came through Nat's earpiece._

_I saw "myself" lifting a high tech weapon and aimed it at the approaching red blur before firing a shimmery blast of energy that hit Xavion dead on, but it didn't seem to hurt him until the collar around his neck started to spark up before the red light on it went out and he was left hovering right above me._

_"Kid, you need to get back to our ship now if you want to see your friend again." Nat's voice called out to him while he was clutching his head in pain._

_"Lumna..." Xavion groaned with pain before he managed to straighten up again._

_"Go! Now!" Nat yelled at him and he took off in the direction of the Quinjet._

_Just when it seemed like he was going to make it, something shot him out of the sky and he plummeted toward the ground as his fire died out and left him as a falling smoking streak._

_"No!"_

I was starting to get pulled out of the memories as Wanda came over and had used her powers on Nat putting her in her worst nightmare and the few glimpses I got before I fully came out were enough to fill me with a chilling horrific sensation.

"Are you alright?" Wanda questioned worriedly and I just breathed deeply with the sense of clarity I had received from the experience of living in someone else's memories and worst fear. Pure anger and hatred turned to fear as I wordlessly shook my head at Wanda's question.

"Pietro!"

Before I knew what had happened, I was standing back outside near the giant shipping containers and Pietro was there telling me,

"Stay here..."

Before disappearing again in a blue and silver blur, leaving me to take in all that I learned in the last few minutes; Ultron had lied to me about the Avengers deliberately attacking my friend and now, most likely, he was still lying, but what I couldn't figure out was what he was really trying to accomplish. The Vibranium, recruiting the twins, turning me to his side; they all played a part in his ultimate plan for ending the Avengers.

For a few minutes, I stood there at a loss at what I had done; I had let my anger control me, violating everything I had been taught ever since landing on this planet and shame now filled my very core.

A quick breeze and a whooshing sound alerted me to Pietro and Wanda's return, only Wanda wasn't looking too good from the way she was trying to catch her breath while wincing.

"What happened!" I rushed over and kneeled down next to her as Pietro asked,

"What can I do?"

"It hurts..." Wanda gasped out as she continued to wince and put a hand to her forehead.

"I'm going to kill him. I'll be right back."

"No. I'm alright. I want… I want to finish the plan. I want the big one." I looked in the direction of Wanda's glare and my eyes widened when I saw Bruce outside the Quinjet looking in our direction.

"No you can't." I protested blocking their view as I stood in front of them with my arms stretched out.

"What are you _doing_?" Wanda questioned with angry confusion.

"Seems like everyone's asking me that today..." I smiled ruefully before making a serious face again to say, "Ultron lied to me and there's a good chance he's lying to you two as well. My friend-"

"You were never on our side were you?"

"You just wanted to infiltrate us and uncover our secrets..." Pietro spoke with betrayal in his voice.

"No I-"

"Out of my way..." Wanda threatened standing back up with her hands starting to glow red.

"Please don't do this..." I pleaded with my hands still raised in a surrendering motion.

Abruptly, Wanda lunged forward and I threw myself out of the way and was about to take off flying to the Quinjet when Pietro grabbed my leg and threw me back down to the ground where I saw a swirl of red and then everything turned to warm colors and my mind blanked out in a surge of heat and anger.

3rd Person POV

"Of course not I'm already there." Ultron told Tony as he was being held in place on the threat of Tony's blaster, "You'll catch on, but first you might need to catch Dr. Banner and Ash."

Just before Tony could shoot Ultron, another fire blast came from behind him to completely destroy Ultron's metallic body. Turning around in shock, Tony saw a kid with bushy red hair, ashy gray skin minus a bright orange tattoo-like swirled marking running along his upper left arm, and piercing yellow eyes wearing a torn-up HYDRA uniform with the logo having been ripped off breathing heavily as if he had been running before turning his attention to Tony and asking in a completely casual way,

"Oh I'm sorry did you have that?"

"Uhhhhh _I'm_ sorry, who are _you_?"

"Xavion. I'm a friend of Ash's."

"Uh huh..." Tony answered back skeptically before he got an alert from JARVIS about incoming emergency calls about the Hulk running loose in the city along with a fiery being, both of whom were under Wanda's mental magic and were raging out of control.

"Natasha I could really use a lullaby." Tony notified said person only to get a response back from Clint.

"Yeah that's not gonna happen, not for a while. The whole team's down you got no back up here."

"I'm calling in Veronica." Tony turned to Xavion to tell him, "Hey Hothead, if you want to help out, start by helping me get my teammates under control."

"That I can do." Xavion spoke confidently before his hands lit up and he took off flying toward the city in front of Tony, who was getting some minor suit upgrades from Veronica while they flew along.

Below them, they could see the Hulk starting to tear apart a police vehicle while Ash was snarling at the already terrified and retreating citizens as they ran away and she started melting anything metal she could get her burning hands on.

As soon as Tony and Xavion got within eyeshot, Ash seemed to sense them and she gave a pained howl and started to take off in the opposite direction the Hulk was heading in.

"Crap they're splitting up. Kid you got Coppertop?"

"On it." Xavion steered himself to fly after Ash as she crash-landed on top of a building with a large wiry tower on it. Xavion landed more gently on top of the building as he carefully approached Ash, who looked like she was having a fight with herself and was losing badly.

"Ash?" Xavion carefully asked and she sharply turned to face him with a twisted rabid look on her face with her eyes glowing a sickly red color, glowing liquid dripping from her nose and mouth, and her general movements seemed broken and uncoordinated.

"It's me… you tried to help me before when I was like this…" Xavion took slow, careful steps toward her as he continued to talk, "only I had no choice but you have a choice, just come with me and I can help you..."

Ash seemed to calm down just a tiny bit as Xavion got close enough to put his hand on her shoulder before the red in her eyes darkened and she gave another pained scream before punching Xavion back with enough fired up force to where he crashed into a leg of the tower hard enough to fully dislodge it and the tower started to lean dangerously to one side.

"OK, plan B..." Xavion tackled Ash off the building and while they were plummeting to the ground below he unleashed a powerful stream of flames on an empty truck, sending it up in flames and he kicked Ash in the direction of the flaming vehicle and she crashed into it making the explosion magnify tenfold as he hovered in the air far above it.

Right as the fire died back down, Xavion heard metallic creaking behind him and saw that the tower was starting to bend on its last two attached legs and was about to snap in half until he flew to the tip of the tower and grabbed onto it with his hands and intensified his flames to where he propelled through the air with the tower in his grasp and he straightened it back upright before sending two coordinated spheres of flames to the broken legs to weld the broken pieces back together to stabilize the base of the tower.

"OK, that was my cardio for the day..." Xavion lightheartedly grumbled to himself as he flew back down to the bonfire where he launched Ash.

He waited to see if she had been snapped out of the trance, both of mental manipulation and of Tayen and it wasn't long before a hand fought its way to the surface followed by the rest of Ash.

Xavion quickly pulled her out of the fire and brought her out to the street where she crumpled to the ground as the large shadow of a jet came over the two of them.

Right before the jet landed close to the pair, Ash started to pass out again with her head leaning against Xavion's shoulder and the rest of her on the street as her new marks glowed radiantly before dimming back down.

AN- I'm really sorry for not updating recently but I've got a lot going on in my life right now with school and family issues that need sorting out. I will still be trying to update as soon as I can, especially with my new laptop working better than my mom's laptop, but I probably won't be able to update every Friday like I used to with all the stuff I got going on right now. Thank you to those of you who still read my stories and I hope to not disappoint you with how my stories are going.


	24. Mark Training

Ash's POV

I could feel the thrum of the Quinjet engine underneath me before I could even open my eyes...

"The news is loving you guys. Nobody else is..." Maria Hill's voice sounded from the background so I decided to open my eyes a bit more.

Right as I did, though, they felt like the time I was taken to the beach and I got a faceful of sand from a misplaced volleyball shot.

"Owwwww…" I rubbed my eyes with both my hands before they were taken away from my face and I heard someone say,

"Don't… you might get rubble in your eyes..."

I opened up my eyes as far as they would allow me to see Xavion sitting next to me on the floor in a corner of the Quinjet while Bruce was sitting in front me and both of us were given weighted blankets.

"What… happened… Xay...?" My voice rasped a bit before I coughed to clear it out.

"You went out of control." Xay explained before his tone lightened up and he told me, "On the bright side, you have your marks now."

"Marks?" I questioned before he handed me a small mirror and I saw the neon orange marks on my left eye; four circles in a curved line under my eyebrow and slightly above my eyelid and four upside-down teardrops under my eye.

"How…?" I traced the shapes with my finger as I continued to stare at them in the mirror.

"Well… I had to kick you into a fiery, crashed vehicle to fully surround you with enough fire to bring you back, but I think given the situation it was alright."

"Aside from the world having seen the both of us in our most uncontrollable state." Bruce interjected as he came to.

"Yeah aside from that..." Xay looked down with a sheepish expression.

"What happened after Ultron…" I asked Bruce and he sighed before explaining,

"After you left to go down to the labs, Ultron attacked us, said he killed someone and would 'turn the liability' so I got worried when I didn't see you after the attack."

"After Ultron destroyed JARVIS, I went to try to protect the Scepter, but I didn't get very far… Then he said he was going after all of you upstairs and when I tried to warn you, he used the Scepter against me to take me hostage."

"You said when Loki tried to use it to control you it only made you stronger, how is it this time it weakened you?"

"It was probably because you were beginning to experience Tayen," Xay remarked, "It makes us think less rationally and messes with our abilities."

"Your father told me about it, I just didn't think it would've gotten that bad." Bruce directed to Xay, making him look at him in surprise.

"You know my father?"

"We met him when this alien came down to try to get Ash for his master's 'dual arsenal of destruction.'" Bruce tiredly mimicked the Oajin's voice, making Xay smile before looking worriedly at me.

"I'm OK and now that you're free from HYDRA and Ultron, you can go back to the clan and your dad." I told him and he looked contemplative before suggesting,

"I think I should stick around a little while longer, y'know to help you adjust to your new powers." Xay gave me a sheepish smile.

"And maybe you can tell me more about home..." I added softly.

"Whaddya me-?" Xay was interrupted when Clint announced,

"We're here." Right before landing the Quinjet in a grassy field and we all got off to walk toward a house in the distance.

As they all walked up the front steps of the house, Thor questioned,

"What is this place?"

"Safe house." Tony stated as if it was the most obvious thing.

"Let's hope." Bruce sighed.

"Honey? I'm home." Clint called out and a woman wearing a flowy blouse to fit around her with long brown hair came out and hugged him, "Hi. Company. Sorry, didn't call ahead."

"Hey." The woman waved to the rest of us.

"This is an agent of some kind." Tony spoke up.

"Gentlemen, this is Laura." Clint introduced her and she waved to them before saying,

"I know all of your names. Except you two." Directing the last part of her sentence to me and Xay.

"I'm Ash."

"Name's Xavion, but you can call me Xay."

"Incoming." Clint spoke right before two children, a boy and a girl, came running from another room and Clint scooped up the girl while pulling the boy into a hug, "Hi, sweetheart! Hey, buddy. How are you guys doing? I brought you some playmates."

"These are smaller agents." Tony tried to convenience the others before I interrupted with,

"I think it's fairly obvious they're not agents."

"Did you bring Auntie Nat?" The girl asked and Nat's face lit up with a smile before saying,

"Why don't you hug her and find out?" Before pulling her into a hug as Steve apologized,

"Sorry for barging in on you."

"Yeah, we would've called ahead, but we were busy having no idea that you existed." Tony stated bluntly.

"Yeah, well, Fury helped me set this up when I joined. He kept it off S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files. I'd like to keep it that way. I figure it's a good place to lay low." Clint explained and Xay tapped my shoulder before motioning with his head to go back outside as everyone started to talk.

3rd Person POV

Once they got outside Ash asked Xay as she went to lean against the fence that surrounded the house,

"Can I ask you a question?"

"You just did." Xay smiled before chuckling lightly and she laughed a little before asking,

"Now can you tell me more about home?"

"You never told me _why_ you wanted to know that." Xay questioned as he leaned against the fence next to her and Ash looked at the tags on her wrists before answering,

"When I arrived on this planet, my escape pod crashed into a nuclear power plant, right in its experimental power core, making me emit gamma radiation whenever my emotions spike and making me lose some of my memories."

"That sounds hard..."

"For a while, I couldn't even remember who you were or my mother and sister, even though I always carried our pictures." She pulled out her pendant which had miraculously stayed in her pocket the entire time she had "raged" out and opened it for what felt like the millionth time that day alone and was beginning to feel like some kind of initiation for people she trusted.

"I remember when we took that photo." Xay pointed to the one of her and him with their arms over each other's shoulders looking like they were trying to walk in sync.

"I can't..." Ash admitted quietly and Xay looked at her worriedly before looking to the sky and reminiscing,

"It was the day after arriving at the training grounds, I had turned another rotation older so I was older than you again and you never like that we only stayed the same age for 9 months so you were pretending to be mad at me, but then I made a glimmer fizzle since I knew it was your favorite trick to see."

"Glimmer fizzle?"

Xay held out his hands palms down before flipping them upwards quickly and a column of tiny sparks whirled upwards toward the sky where they began to rain down on them like a snowy flurry.

"I… remember now..." Ash looked at the sprinkling of sparks in awe before holding her hands out to allow some to land on and get absorbed into her skin, "The first time you did this you almost burned down your home growth."

"I was only 9 rotations old." He retorted defensively in a joking manner.

"It looks more… powerful than it did back then." Ash wondered out loud.

"That's because Tayen allows us to access more of our core's power to heighten our abilities. Watch." Ash waited as Xay put both of his hands on his chest and her eyes widened when a small circle of light appeared under his hands and sent out small tendrils of wispy light to cover his hands making their way to his marks on his shoulder to make it light up with a warm light before repeating the trick and sending an even bigger flurry of sparks down on them.

"We might want to be careful, I don't think Clint will like it if we burn down his house." Ash lightly joked after she stamped out a tiny fire that formed on a patch of dry grass under their feet.

"Wow!"

"That was so cool!"

They both turned to see Clint's kids, Lila and Cooper, standing behind them with amazed looks on their faces.

"You _are_ aliens..." Lila looked up at them with awe in her eyes.

"Can you do more cool tricks like that?" Cooper asked.

Ash and Xay looked at each other and he smiled and nodded, before Ash smiled and answered,

"Sure, but not here I wouldn't want to accidentally burn down your nice house."

"We have a secret place you could do your magic." Lila took Ash's hand and began to lead her away while Cooper did the same with Xay and the four of them disappeared into the forest, unaware they were being watched by Bruce and Natasha from the window of their room while they were talking.

_Time Skip to Dusk_

"One more time _pleeeeaaaasse_!" Lila clapped her hands joyfully as the last of the embers faded into darkness.

Lila and Cooper had brought Ash and Xay to a clearing by a river that was mostly rocks and pebbles so there wasn't much to burn as Ash continually practiced enhancing her powers with her core's energy and Xay answered all her questions about their home planet and Ash told him all about Bruce and her time with the Avengers.

"One more time and then we have to head back." Ash agreed before she placed her hands over her core, making it light up the same way Xay's did but her marks around her eye glowed before she blew sparks out from her hands and they zipped around them like hyperactive fireflies before exploding into mini fireworks whenever Lila or Cooper touched them.

"Alright let's go." Xay clapped his hands and started to lead the way when Cooper told him,

"How? We can't see."

"It is getting dark." Ash noticed that the last of the sun's rays were disappearing over the horizon and she and Xay's natural night vision started to kick in, making their eyes glow a tinted green to anyone looking at them.

"Ooh! New lesson!" Xay blurted out excitedly.

"Xay!" Ash scolded him, reminding him that two other kids were with them and they were looking around their dark surroundings nervously.

"Ok fine..." Xay relented dejectedly and they each picked up one of the kids and flew over the trees to make it back to the house, Lila and Cooper whooping in excitement the whole way there.

Once they got inside and Lila and Cooper went to go do their own thing, Ash saw Nick Fury in the kitchen and looked at him wide-eyed, but kept out of eye range from him and the others as he continued to talk to the other Avengers before Xay whispered loudly,

"Who's that?"

"Someone who can clearly see you two there even with only one bad eye." Fury answered as he and the others noticed the two of them standing there.

"I thought you were supposed to be dead." Ash spoke confused remembering the news from the day HYDRA tried to kidnap her from the Tower.

"I thought _he_ was supposed to be dead." Fury directed toward Xay.

"Hasn't everyone died at one point or another?" Xay tried to joke but it fell flat as everyone looked at him blankly and he grinned sheepishly before saying, "Ooookay then..."

"New look?" Fury directed to Ash, motioning to his eye to point out her marks, "Not bad."

"Thanks?"

"Anyways, Ultron says the Avengers are the only thing between him and his mission. And whether or not he admits it, his mission is global destruction. All this, laid in a grave. So stand. Outwit the platinum bastard." Fury declared and Nat snarked,

"Steve doesn't like that kind of talk."

"You know what, Romanoff?" Steve started to say but stopped when he saw her smirking.

"So, what does he want?" Fury pronounced each word of his sentence while Ash moved over to Bruce and he looked at her in concern before she nodded and smiled.

"To become better. Better than us. He keeps building bodies." Steve stated.

"Person bodies. The human form is inefficient. Biologically speaking, we're outmoded. But he keeps coming back to it." Tony added right as Ash caught sight of the butterfly painting that Lila made for Nat earlier and thought aloud to herself but catching Bruce's attention as well,

"Chrysalis..."

"When you two programmed him to protect the human race, you amazingly failed." Nat brought up

"They don't need to be protected. They need to evolve." Bruce started Ash's thought and she finished with,

"Ultron's planning to evolve..."

"How?" Fury questioned.

"Has anyone been in contact with Helen Cho?" Bruce questioned and was answered with the silence that followed.

"Let's get to it then." Fury suggested and everyone started to get ready to leave.

"Where are we going?" Xay came up to Ash and Bruce, eager to find out what the plan was.

"Actually..." Ash started to say but hesitated so Bruce finished her thought,

"It might be best for you to go back with your dad."

"Why?"

"We signed up for battles we might not return from, but I don't think your father can handle losing you a third time, Xay..." Ash told him as she held his hand and looked him in the eye.

"I guess, but I don't want to lose you either Starlight."

"Starlight?"

"It was my nickname for you back home." Xay explained and Ash scrunched up one of her eyes in thought before saying,

"I think we'd be more like solar flares."

"Ooh that's a good name, mind if I use it sometime?" Xay asked and Ash smiled while looking down before answering,

"Sure thing, _Solar Flare_."

"Time to go, you two." Fury came over to them before asking, "You three?"

"Nope, just two." Xay spoke with a bit of discouragement but shook it off to give them an encouraging nod.

"Let's go then." Fury led the way out and Ash stopped right outside the jet Fury used to get there to hug Xay one last time.

"See you around Solar Flare."

"See you soon Starlight." Xay quickly kissed her cheek, leaving her stunned as he grinned sheepishly before taking off to the sky.

Ash stood there for a few more seconds as her cheeks turned a darker red and she put a hand to her face before Bruce called her aboard and she boarded in a daze.

"You OK?" Bruce asked, noticing her deeper reddened face.

"Everything is wonderful..."

"Ok..." Bruce raised an eyebrow at that but let it go as Ash stared out the window as the jet took off for Avengers Tower.

2443 Words


	25. Creating a Vision

Ash's POV

Once Fury dropped me and Bruce off at Avengers Tower, he took Maria with him to wherever he was planning on going while the others went to Dr. Cho's lab.

I had gone to change into my lab attire since I had been wearing the same dress from the party and it had gotten dirty and ripped from being abducted by Ultron and my jumpsuit needed to be cleaned quickly.

I was sitting on one of the workshop tables doing the power concentration technique Xay taught me to see what else I was now capable of doing when I felt my new marks heat up steadily and a stabbing pain went through my head before a vision of Earth being swiftly hit by a large fireball from outer space.

Gasping both in shock and pain, I lept off the table and held my head as the stinging started to go away, but the vision left me with a bad feeling of impending doom.

"You OK?" I looked up to see Bruce standing there looking at me worriedly.

"No," I admitted while shaking my head, "I think Ultron's planning on more than just the _Avenger's_ extinction."

I tried to straighten up but I leaned forward and stumbled in place before I could fully stand up straight again.

"Maybe it's just the radiation overload, you haven't deposited into D.R.E.I. in a while."

"Oh yeah..." I looked to the tags on my wrists and realized that maybe I just needed to rid myself of the excess radiation energy that had no doubt been building up inside of me with all the traumatic recent events.

I walked over to the chair on the platform with two circles of metal on the armrests that had tubing leading to underneath the lab where it would be converted into clean energy, but after I sat down and connected the tags with the metal discs, the screen announced that there was no excess radiation within me.

"That doesn't make any sense..." I thought aloud to myself.

"Unless..." Bruce started to say and I realized what he was thinking so I finished his thought as I looked at the tags on my wrists remembering the platinum discs that had been over them earlier,

"Ultron took my extra radiation energy when he captured me for whatever he's planning."

"Are you... doing alright after… all of that…?"

I looked at Bruce considering his question before I answered,

"I don't know..."

"Do you… want to talk about it?"

"Yes." I answered honestly and I moved to face him as he pulled up a chair from a desk nearby.

"I just don't know… I know I should feel happy that we saved Xay and that I have my marks now and I know more about my home now but I just feel… emptier than before and I don't know why… maybe it's because I thought Wanda and Pietro were good and then they turned on me because I refused to let them hurt you and I still think they're good but Ultron's steering them the wrong way and a part of me wants to help Ultron but everything is just so confusing..." Towards the end of my sentence I started to sob and I was pulled into a hug as Bruce comforted me,

"Woah woah hey it's OK..." Patting my back and letting me cry onto his shoulder as I bawled out,

"I just... I wish I could make sense of everything… everything is so confusing right now... I feel like... I don't even know what to believe anymore..."

"Well, part of life is accepting that some things take a while to make sense if at all, but sometimes uncertainty can be a good thing."

"How?"

"It makes you more open to new ideas and things. Like how I should've been more open about what you are to me."

"What?" I asked as I pulled away from the hug.

"Nat told me about how you told her that you saw me as a father for all these years."

"Oh no..." I pulled my knees up to my chest and hid my face in them, embarrassment rising up in my face.

"Hey it's OK…" I could feel him patting my back again before asking, "Why didn't you tell me how you feel?"

"I just…" I took a deep breath and let my legs down before explaining, "I thought I was just your obligation after you took me in… and I never wanted to feel like a burden to you… that's why at first I did my best to stay out of your way but still help wherever I could… over time you did more than keep me hidden… you kept me safe, helped me learn and grow... You've always been there for me and I-" I was cut off when Bruce pulled me into a hug and I was startled at first but slowly hugged back as he told me,

"Ash, I will _always_ be there for you, whether I'm here or not..."

"Thank you..." We hugged for a little longer before pulling apart and I started wiping my tears away with my sleeve saying, "I'm sorry for acting like such a coreling."

"What's-?"

"A little kid."

"Oh."

I laughed lightly before a voice rang out,

_Hey you guys? _

We went over to the computer to see Clint in the Quinjet on the screen.

"We read you Clint."

_I'm bringing the Cradle in now._

I noticed the grim look on his face on the screen as he piloted the Quinjet to land.

"Clint? What's wrong?" I asked worriedly and my blood ran cold when he answered,

_Nat's been taken by Ultron._

_Short Time Skip_

"Anything on Nat?" Bruce asked worriedly.

"I haven't heard. But she's alive, or Ultron would be rubbing our faces in it." Tony answered as he walked into the lab.

"This is sealed tight." Clint told us and he jumped down from the top of the Cradle.

"We're gonna need to access the program, break it down from within." Bruce went over to a screen to start searching for a way to access the Cradle.

"Any chance Natasha might leave you a message outside the Internet? Old-school spy stuff?" Tony suggested.

"There are some nets I can cast." Clint walked away and I quickly walked after him,

"Clint?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell her to be careful, we don't know what Ultron could be capable of doing anymore..."

"Don't worry, I'll find her." Clint walked away and I walked back to Tony and Bruce just as Tony was telling him,

"Our ally… the guy protecting the military's nuclear codes, I found him."

Pulling up a very familiar hologram from the computer as he spoke,

"Hello, Dr. Banner, Ms. Ash."

"JARVIS?" I looked in surprise at the hologram in front of me with a relieved smile as Tony explained,

"Ultron didn't go after JARVIS because he was _angry_. He attacked him because he was _scared _of what he can do. So JARVIS went underground. Scattered, dumped his memory. But not his protocols. He didn't even know he was in there until I pieced him together."

"So, you want _me_ to help _you_ put _JARVIS_ _into_ this thing?" Bruce questioned gesturing from JARVIS to the body within the Cradle.

"_No_! Of course not. I wanna help _you_ put JARVIS in this thing." Tony corrected him and the rest of their conversation was drowned out as I felt some kind of pull coming from the Cradle and I was about to put my hand on it when I heard JARVIS say,

"Ms. Ash?"

"Huh?" I pulled away from the Cradle to face the three of them and I gave them a supportive nod before Bruce announced,

"Let's get to work."

_Short Working Time Skip_

"This framework is not compatible." Tony announced from his position by the computer while I was down by the Cradle with my tablet in hand.

"The genetic coding tower is at 97% and steadily rising." I informed them as the screen told me that the body was ready for upload.

"You have _got_ to upload that schematic in the next three minutes." Bruce told him and we all worked to get it done right before a voice sounded from the entrance to the lab,

"I'm gonna say this once." We all looked up to see Steve standing there with Wanda and Pietro behind him.

"How about 'none-ce'?" Tony snarked as he demanded,

"Shut it down!"

"Nope, not gonna happen."

"You don't know what you're doing."

"And you do? She's not in your head?" Bruce questioned while pointing to Wanda.

"I know you're angry." Wanda spoke but Bruce cut in,

"Oh we're _way_ past that. I could choke the life out of you and never change a shade."

Right before everyone started to argue despite my pleas from them to stop,

"Banner, after everything that's hap-"

"It's nothing compared to what's coming!"

"You don't know what's in there."

"This isn't a game!"

When a blue blur whirled around the Cradle unplugging all the wires from it and making the whole thing start to spark up.

"No, no. Go on. You were saying?" Pietro told them right before a gunshot rang out and the floor beneath him gave in and he fell through the floor.

"Pietro!" Wanda shouted after her brother and I was about to run over to her when a beeping sound alerted me to the critical condition of the body within the Cradle.

"We're losing it!" I warned Tony as more red warnings showed up on my screen.

"I'm rerouting the upload." Tony was about to do so when Steve threw his shield in the direction of the computer, destroying it before Tony's glove came zipping onto his hand and he sent a blast to Steve as the rest of his armor started to come on and Wanda looked ready to attack when Bruce disarmed from her behind,

"Go ahead, piss me off."

"Don't!" I looked to him with a pleading look right before Steve took another shot at Tony and they were both sent colliding to the floor

"Stop it!" I yelled to the two of them but I went unheard as Clint came back up with a gun in his hand.

That gave Wanda enough time to free herself and blast Bruce away, ready to hit him again when I shouted to her,

"No!"

Right before Thor came into the lab and leaped up onto the top of the Cradle to raise his hammer into the air, looking like he was ready to bring it down on it.

"Wait!" Bruce yelled right before Thor brought it down to the Cradle to charge it.

All was quiet for a few seconds before the metal casing was wrenched open forcing Thor off to land next to me and to allow a being out to land in a crouched position. He was a humanoid with reddish skin with silver lines all over his form and there was a yellow stone in the center of his forehead.

The being slowly stood up looking at himself and everyone in the room before setting his sights on me and Thor. Abruptly he lunged toward Thor who threw him through the lab wall and almost out of the Tower if the being hadn't stopped himself by levitating right in front of the window to look out at the city below.

Thor and I jumped down after him and Steve followed with his shield in hand ready to attack when Thor held out his hand and I spoke to him telepathically as Xay taught me,

_Stop! He's just confused…_

Everyone gathered around, Thor put his hammer down and Pietro sped into the room, as the being floated down from the window and something clothing adjacent formed over himself before he spoke,

"I am sorry. That was…odd. Thank you."

Nodding to Thor before copying his cape but a bright yellow instead of his red.

"Thor. You helped create this?" Steve demanded to know.

"I've had a vision. A whirlpool that sucks in all hope of life, and at its center is that." Thor explained before pointing to the gem in the center of the being's forehead.

"What? The gem?" Bruce questioned.

"It's the Mind Stone. It's one of the six Infinity Stones. The greatest power in the universe, unparalleled in its destructive capabilities."

"Then why would you bring-" Steve started to ask but Thor interrupted him,

"Because Stark is right."

"Oh it's definitely the end times." Bruce spoke but I couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

"The Avengers cannot defeat Ultron." Thor explained.

"Not alone." The Vision added.

"Why does your Vision sound like JARVIS?" Steve questioned.

"We reconfigured JARVIS's matrix… to create something new." Bruce explained.

"I think I've had my fill of new." Steve seethed quietly before the Vision spoke,

"You think I'm a child of Ultron."

"You're not?"

"I'm not Ultron. I am not JARVIS. I am… I am."

"I looked in your head and saw annihilation." Wanda walked toward him with a distrustful expression.

"Look again."

"Her seal of approval means jack to me." Clint spoke up from where he was standing.

"Their powers, the horrors in our heads, Ultron himself, they all came from the Mind Stone. And they're nothing compared to what it can unleash. But with it on our side-"

"Is it? Are you? On our side?" Steve interrupted Thor's speech to ask the Vision.

"I don't think it's that simple." The Vision spoke calmly and peacefully.

"Well, it better get real simple real soon." Clint told him.

"I am on the side of life. Ultron isn't. He will end it all."

"What's he waiting for?" Tony asked and the Vision answering while motioning with his head to him,

"You."

"Where?"

"Sokovia. He's got Nat there, too." Clint answered.

"If we're wrong about you, if you're the monster that Ultron made you to be…" Bruce started to warn the Vision before he asked,

"What will you do?"

"He's good." I spoke up from my position and everyone turned to look at me in question before I added, "I can feel it..."

Closing my eyes I could feel the warmth around my marks and when I opened my eyes back up I could see that my core was glowing and so was the Mind Stone before they both dimmed back down.

"Somehow Ultron knew about my connection to the stone, that's why he took me, he thought I would be able to control or power it… but that won't happen anymore..." I looked to the Vision and I nodded to him as he started to address everyone while walking around the room,

"I don't want to kill Ultron. He's unique and he's in pain. But that pain will roll over the Earth. So, he must be destroyed. Every form he's built, every trace of his presence on the net. We have to act now. And not one of us can do it without the others. Maybe I am a monster. I don't think I'd know if I were one. I'm not what you are, and not what you intended. So, there may be no way to make you trust me. But we need to go." At the end of his speech he held up Thor's hammer to him and everyone's eyes went wide at the sight except for me, Wanda, and Pietro.

"Right." Thor spoke and walked off, patting Tony's shoulder to say, "Well done."

"Suit up." Steve told everyone and we all went to suit up for our next mission.


End file.
